


White Hot

by babystellagibson



Category: inFAMOUS: Second Son
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-07-20 22:31:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16146914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babystellagibson/pseuds/babystellagibson
Summary: Lesbian fan fiction about Brooke Augustine and an original character I created called Clair Kensington. Contains a fair few sex scenes but they don't really use explicit language. Leading up to the events in Infamous: Second Son. I probably won't write more/conclude it since I wrote it in 2014 and am just uploading so a friend can read it, but you never know.Key if u don't know the backstory:Conduits/Bio Terrorists - People with the ability to control certain matters e.g. concrete, smoke, electricity, neon, metals, etcDepartment of Unified Protection (or DUP) - Special task force formed by Brooke Augustine/the US government to seek and detain all conduits/bio terroristsBrooke Augustine - Leader of the Department of Unified Protection (DUP), ex-army, also a conduit/bio terrorist with control of concreteCurdun Cay - the prison where conduits/bio terrorists are detainedEugene - Conduit/bio terrorist with control of video who conjures up training exercises for DUP trainees and detainees





	White Hot

CHAPTER 1

 

Well, this is what you might call a sticky situation. Here I am, at a soirée at the Royal Plaza Hotel for the who’s who of the Department of Unified Protection and its government and commercial benefactors, perched on the edge of my seat wearing a little black cocktail dress, my long blonde hair perfectly coiffed, a flute of incessantly effervescent champagne between my thumb and forefinger, hoping that nobody notices me. Hoping I am just regarded as a token young girl, some kind of a hanger on, and not given a second glance. Why?

Because, three weeks ago, I discovered that I am what they call a bio terrorist. I am the kind of person the D.U.P hunts. 

I never thought anything of the term before, but now that I am what they would call one, I dislike it. Just because I have this power, doesn’t mean I would ever use it for terror. No. I wish I didn’t have this power. More than anything, I wish there was a way I could make it go away.

Three weeks ago, I had my heart broken for the first time. Except, I couldn’t speak to anybody about it, because the person who broke my heart was a girl, and our relationship was a secret. My family are extremely conservative, and we live in the public eye. So, I could never live my life the way I’d like to, out in the open. I’m not even allowed to move out of the family home, even though I’m twenty-one. I wanted to move states, start a new life, but no. I had to attend college here in Washington and continue living my sheltered little life.

Except, there are ways around being sheltered. Cracks you can slip through, cracks that let a little color into your otherwise gray life. That’s what she was, Eleanor Harper. Color. Her father owns Harper Publishing, and her family is just as conservative as mine, maybe even more, if that’s possible. She was a break in the monotony. She made me feel alive. It lasted all of three months, but it was the best time of my life. I fell in love with her the second I saw her. She claimed the same. Then, out of nowhere, she told me that this mundane, six pack sporting jock guy she was supposedly only ever ‘friends’ with had asked her to be his girlfriend. And that she was gonna say yes. 

I was seething. Furious. Inconsolable. Hell, not that there was anyone to console me, because no one knew. I felt like I was going to explode, I felt white hot, and this searing, sizzling, bubbling feeling kept pulsating through my entire body, especially my arms. Especially my fingertips. 

That night, I sat through dinner with my family and acted normally, as I have trained myself to do, but that feeling, that pulse, wouldn’t stop. Benjamin, my brother, was recounting some boring story about a football game he played recently, and I was staring at a blank spot in the wall, brooding on the injustice of it all, what a bitch Eleanor is, thinking of all the times she told me she loved me and how it was all a lie, when I felt something shift in my hand. I looked down, and saw that either end of my knife had dropped off, and a strange glowing orange substance was dripping from my clenched fist. I opened up my hand and stared at its contents, wondering where that odd orange sauce had come from and where the rest of my knife had gone before realization hit me like a bucket of icy water. The knife had melted. I was holding molten metal. And it didn’t hurt. 

I stuffed my hand in my lap as quickly as I could, and glanced around the table, relieved to find that no one had noticed. I cleaned the metal from my palm with my napkin, scooped the ends of my knife off of the table into my lap, and excused myself as soon as I could.

Of course, once I knew, I experimented. It didn’t take long, because if there’s one thing I have always had to be, it’s disciplined. So now, I can control metal. I can melt and solidify it in seconds. I can move through it. I just manipulate it around me and then back to its original form. It’s amazing. The scary part is, I can also fashion it into weapons. Arrows. Knives. 

Bullets.

My hands are, essentially, guns. And it terrifies me. I don’t ever want to hurt anyone. But what if I lose my temper? What then? I’m scared. Scared, and all alone in this. Every time I think about Eleanor, I melt whatever metal is near me. I have wrecked my phone, and my TV, and several pairs of earrings.

It can’t continue, and I don’t want it to. So here I am, at this party full of people who pump money into a government organization that fears and hates me, and honestly? I feel like maybe I should just hand myself in. Lay my hands before Brooke Augustine and let her encase them in concrete. Let her take me away. 

Ah, Brooke. There she is, about ten feet away from me talking in hushed voices with a puffy looking old man, strangely not in her usual clothes. I suppose it is a party, but she has come for dinners at the house in the past with no regard for dress code. Tonight, though, she’s wearing a crisp, sleeveless white shirt, an iridescent, spiky gray necklace peeking out from beneath the collar with earrings that match not far away. Her red hair is pulled back into a neat chignon as usual, but somehow her face looks softer, more feminine than usual. The shirt is tucked into tight black pants, which lead to, of all things, a pair of black heels. 

Why do I notice all of this? Well… I have always, always had a crush on Brooke, since she first attended a dinner five years ago, when I was sixteen. Not that she has any idea, but she was the first person of the same sex to pique my interest, and make me question my sexuality. All that power, that poise, her ice cold demeanor, her ruthlessness. I adore it. It makes me want to break down all those walls, get inside her head, be the only person who knows her secrets… maybe if I tell her mine…

But what if she brands me too dangerous and orders for me to be killed? 

No, she couldn’t do that. She couldn’t do that for one very important reason. One very important thing that may even get me special treatment, in all this. 

My father is the President of the United States of America. 

 

CHAPTER 2 

 

My thoughts are caught somewhere between the idea of her naked body and whether she will want to kill me when I show her what I can do, when she abruptly turns her head and catches my eye. She must have felt my stare. Oh, crap. I look down at my glass and immediately bring it to my lips, staring at the bubbles as the liquid hits my tongue and fizzes, but it’s no use, I can see the shape of her growing through the yellow haze. 

‘Enjoying the champagne, Clair?’ her unmistakable voice cuts through me and I shiver a little as I tear my eyes from my lap and up to hers. Deep sea green, cold, expressionless. I don’t know if she’s ever remained this close to me for so long before, usually she greets me with a hand shake and moves on to more important people. I’m staring at her features, my gaze working over the arch of her eyebrows, the straight line of her nose, the corners of her mouth, her jawline, taking it in, feeling as though I have been starved of it all these years. 

‘It’s okay,’ I manage, perhaps a little too late.

‘I suppose all these dinners and functions must be a bore to you. You’d prefer to be out with your friends,’ she says, matter-of-fact, a tinge of disapproval washing over her face.

‘I don’t have any friends,’ I respond in monotone, because it’s true, because Eleanor was my only friend and everyone else is mundane and I don’t like to waste my time on anyone ordinary. 

‘I see,’ she says, and I notice the corners of her lips turn slightly upwards. ‘And why is that?’

‘I find most people to be mundane, if I’m honest,’ I say, and then my eyes dart around the room, I’m panicking, and I can’t believe I just told her that, why did I tell her that? This has to be the most time she has ever spent talking to me, how could I be so honest?

‘I see.’ She’s actually smiling. That’s an actual smile. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen it. It’s bizarre, like a grizzly bear wearing a baby bonnet or something. It’s beautiful, too. ‘You know,’ she says, and she swoops closer to me, and the movement stirs a spicy, vaguely floral scent into the air which must be her perfume. ‘I think you and I are very alike.’ 

‘Brooke, I mean, Ms. Augustine, could I... could I speak with you privately? Now? Somewhere away… from here?’ It comes out before I can stop it, I am trapped by the warmth of her previous statement and in a second of cruel confusion I had myself convinced she might understand, being a ‘bio-terrorist’ herself, that she might help me. How could I be so stupid. Everybody knows how she landed herself the job. Everybody knows how she saved her own ass and served that poor kid up on a silver platter. It’s too late now, she’s subtly glancing around the room, checking that no one is watching us. 

‘Of course,’ she says, in a low voice, and jolts her head up a little, signaling for me to get up. ‘I want you to follow me three feet behind exactly, a little to the left. When I pass through that doorway,’ she nods towards the hallway to our left ‘I want you to stop and pick up a canapé from that waiter. Watch where I go. Follow me after you finish eating it, eleventh floor,’ she says, then she turns on her heel and walks away. 

What? I mean, what? Why all the directions? What’s going on? Does she know? Is she trying to help me already? I realize she’s already more than three feet away and hurry after her, but not too conspicuously. I pick up an odd little chocolate cake with half a strawberry poking out of it and stuff it into my mouth, watching out of the corner of my eye as she gets into the elevator. I glance around the room as I’m chewing, and thankfully nobody is looking at me.

When the elevator doors open to the eleventh floor, Brooke Augustine is standing square in the middle of the hallway, hands in pockets, expression entirely unreadable.

‘Good,’ she says, and she turns on her heel again. I scuttle after her like a confused little beetle, and almost crash into her when she stops to swipe a card in a door. I follow her into the hotel room. ‘Take a seat,’ she says, and she points to the bed. I don’t understand what’s going on. I dumbly oblige, and sit on the edge of the soft white Egyptian cotton as she closes the door and locks it. Then, she saunters towards me, and the hairs on my neck and arms stand up when she pushes her hands through my hair, pulls my head up so that I have to stare into her eyes and breathes ‘Oh, Clair…’ 

I swallow, hard, blinking up at her, a deer in the headlights, struggling to process what’s happening to me. WHAT is happening to me? Are those really Brooke Augustine’s cold fingers in my hair? ‘Don’t think I haven’t noticed,’ she says, her voice husky and low.

‘Noticed… noticed what?’ I sputter, terrified and enthralled and suddenly very, very horny. 

‘You underestimate the level to which my job demands me to train myself in human observation. You are as subtle as a bulldozer. Oh, but I’m not being fair. You were so young in the beginning. You have improved marginally, I’ve watched you trying. Clair, I know you think you are the world’s greatest actress, but you can’t fool me.’ 

‘Wh-what?’ words are failing me. Is she talking about my powers? How could she know, even before? Does she have some sixth sense for it? Do people with powers get that? 

‘I know all about your little tryst with the Harper girl,’ her words cut into me and I gasp, pure dread shaking me to my core as relief does the same simultaneously. It’s not about my power. Who else knows? Does my family know? Does the whole world know? Am I in trouble? ‘Don’t worry,’ she clearly sees my alarm. ‘I am the only person who knows. I personally keep tabs on people who are relevant to the continuation of the D.U.P. I haven’t told anybody.’ 

‘I… don’t know what to say to you.’ I say. My brain catches up with my body, and I begin to understand. Her hands are still in my hair, holding my head, her thighs are pressed against my knees, and her eyes are bright. Excited, even. We are in her hotel room. I am sat on her bed. This is not normal. This is not normal behavior. Is she… is she a lesbian too? Is that what this is about? Well, it would make a lot of sense. She has never married, never been romantically linked to anyone. Barely seen in public, except for public addresses for the D.U.P. It would explain why I have always been so drawn to her, too. 

So she wants to have sex with me. She’s been talking about my crush on her. She is silent. I can see her watching my mind work, probably even reading my thoughts for all I know. My head is rushing, my heart thumping, senses all rising to just beneath my skin. Fuck it. 

I part my legs. She smiles triumphantly and pushes herself between them as she leans over me, her hands finding the plushy mattress either side of my shoulders, the weight of her body on mine exciting me already, and as her beautiful face looms close to mine, I can feel her breath on my lips. This is it, she’s going to kiss me, and I’m going to tear those clothes from her body and kiss every inch of her. Then her eyes harden, and her hands close around my wrists. I grimace and push at them, and she is so strong, short of using my powers there is no way I could get out from under her. 

‘Push me off.’ 

‘What?’

‘Get me off of you. Go on.’ 

‘I can’t.’

‘You can’t?’ she says incredulously. ‘Don’t lie to me.’

‘I… what? I’m not, I-I-’ 

‘Let me speed this up a little.’ she says, and her breath is hot and her eyes are shining and I want her, I want her so badly and then I hear the rumble of rock, no, concrete, and I feel a sharp pain in my wrists, and I cry out, and she laughs at me, she laughs at my pain, and that’s when it happens. Hot metal shoots through the concrete, shattering it to pieces, and I push her off with such force that she lands on her back on the floor. As quickly as she scrambles to get up I have pushed her down and encased her hands in metal, and I am straddling her. Her expression snaps from fear and anger to amusement, and she smiles up at me. ‘Perfectly done.’ 

‘Fuck you!’ I exclaim, picking up and slamming her wrists on to the floor so that she winces. Hot tears prick at my eyes. I thought she wanted me. I should have known she was just going to use this against me. I should have known she would know that I have powers. She knew about Eleanor, and we were so private and careful. If she knows about that, she has to know about my experiments. 

‘Oh yes, that’s exactly what you want to do, isn’t it,’ she smirks. 

What do I have to lose?

‘Yes.’ I say, feeling my lips curl into a smile. I lower myself down, careful to keep hold of her wrists, and press my lips against hers. I feel her breath quicken, and I kiss her, and she moans angrily into my mouth, but it trails off into something more like arousal, and I kiss her harder, bite at her bottom lip, and feel her body tense up beneath mine. Then, I pull away just in time to see that her eyes are closed. They flutter open and stare back into mine. Scared. ‘If you wanted to capture me, you just had to capture me,’ I say ‘It wouldn’t have been hard. This, all of this? Completely unnecessary. I think you want me.’ I relish the last sentence, saying it teasingly, with panache. She says nothing. I lean in to kiss her again, and she lifts her head to meet mine, kissing me back, hard, pressing her body up into mine. 

‘Yes,’ she says into my mouth. ‘I want you. Let me go.’

‘Right!’ I laugh ‘So you can encase me in concrete and send me to Curdun Cay? I don’t think so.’ 

‘Clair. I don’t want to send you to Curdun Cay.’

‘Yeah right.’

‘No. I want you to join me.’ 

 

CHAPTER 3

 

‘Are you going to let me up?’ she asks, and we’re staring each other down, suspicious. Stand off point. What if I let her go and she’s lying about not wanting to capture me?

‘Convince me.’ I say.

‘I needed to see it for myself. I’ve seen footage from the closed circuits around the white house perimeter-’

‘Shit!’ I interrupt her. Of course. How could I be so ridiculously stupid. Experimenting outside where there are cameras. How could I forget about the cameras? 

‘-but you can never be sure. Clair, your ability could be of great use to the D.U.P. You are the first of your kind. Able to manipulate metal. Most abilities can break concrete, with enough force. But metal,’ I see fire in her eyes ‘metal is tougher. Metal is often unbreakable. Just think what you could do with an unlimited supply of titanium…’ she trails off, she seems to have retreated into some sick fantasy. It’s enough to convince me. I slowly retract the metal around her hands and wrists, stand up and step back. I’m not safe yet. She sits for a moment, rubbing her wrists. I offer her my hand and help her up, and we’re staring into each other’s eyes again. ‘So you’ll join me.’

‘I don’t know.’ 

‘Oh,’ she smiles a little ‘you think that was a question.’

‘Don’t I get a choice?’ I ask. She smiles and walks closer to me, then leans in to speak into my ear.

‘Trust me. You don’t want the alternative.’ she brushes her lips against my neck, then walks towards the door. ‘You will be escorted to the D.U.P training center at 6am tomorrow. Your father knows. About your power, that is. Everything else… can be our little secret. Please wait precisely seven minutes before following me out. The door will lock behind you.’ 

With that, she is gone, and I am left staring at the door.

 

CHAPTER 4

 

Training is grueling. Hard. Painful. She is a tough master, and she seems to revel in my suffering. She has some poor unseen conduit conjure up holograms of countless people I know, family members even, and forces me to destroy them. 

And finally, when I am exhausted, sat on the floor panting and crying, and I have lost all sense of time and haven’t eaten since I arrived, she conjures up Eleanor. 

I lose it. I flat out lose it. I scream and I send a barrage of unending, searing hot metal through the holographic Eleanor’s head, but this hologram is different, it’s harder to destroy. Like in a game. The boss level. She just stands there, holographic Eleanor, staring blankly past me, and I can’t stop screaming, tears are streaming down my face, and I’m hitting her, laying into her, shooting bullets, knives, everything, and the hologram barely flickers. Finally, I stand, crying, and drain so much metal I can taste it in my mouth, feel it in my veins, and I create the most magnificent, humongous sword. Using the last dregs of energy left in me, I pull it up above my head, and plunge it into the heart of the holographic Eleanor, which finally breaks into a thousand tiny holographic pieces before disappearing.

I collapse in a sad little heap on the floor and hiccup, crying, lost, useless. How could she betray me like that? Why did she tell me she loved me, when she never did? Why would she lie? 

Why did Brooke use my sexuality against me? Did she want me at all? Why did she tell my father about my powers? Why couldn’t she have spoken to me first? Why couldn’t she have helped me?

I feel powerless. Helpess. I can’t stop crying. 

I hear the generators switch off, their constant hum that had kept me company without my noticing leaving me alone in the silence and dim light. A few minutes pass, punctuated by my occasional little gasps for breath in between floods of tears, and then I can hear footsteps resonating through the arena, cold, metallic, echoing back at themselves as they approach me. I don’t want to look up. A hand, strangely warm, tucks my hair behind my left ear, and I open my eyes to see her there in front of me, her eyes soft and sympathetic, a light, wistful smile on her lips. 

‘We’re done for the day, Clair. Let’s get you out of here,’ she says, and I shake my head violently. I can’t move. A little hiccup escapes me and fresh tears flood down my cheeks. She sighs, and then she moves close to me and pulls my head into her chest. She is warm, and she smells good, and I nestle in to her and start to cry harder. I hate her, but I can’t help it. I feel as though every sad thing that has ever happened to me has suddenly risen to the surface and decided to escape me. I’m not even a crier. I almost never cry. This is mortifying. ‘I know it was hard. Training is designed to make you tough. It is designed to make you ruthless, because you have to be. Bio-terrorists won’t give you a chance to make that decision, and you will be dead before you can, so you can’t be soft. It’s for your benefit,’ she tells me, and I nod, tears still streaming down my face. ‘You did amazingly. You broke all of our training records. I mean it,’ she says, and she pulls back, and lifts my chin so I’m looking at her face. ‘I’m impressed.’ 

‘Y-you didn’t give me a ch-choice,’ I reply. Why can’t I just be calm and collected the way she is? Why am I crying? Has she ever cried? I can’t even begin to imagine it, not even for a second. Her face softens even more, and she closes her eyes for a moment and shakes her head. 

‘I don’t have the choice to give you a choice, Clair. Don’t you understand? If I start giving bio-terrorists choices, people will start asking questions. Am I going soft on my own kind? Do I really hold the protection of normal people in the highest priority? I can’t afford to be soft, Clair, not even for a second. Not even….’ she lowers her voice ‘not even if I want to.’ 

‘But you’re the… the leader.’ 

‘You don’t understand,’ she smiles at me disdainfully and I feel a spasm of hate rush through me. I jump to my feet, my fingers glowing with hot metal already.

‘Neither do you!’ I spit ‘You don’t understand what feelings are! Emotions! They’re all just tools to you, just like powers!’

‘Believe what you want to believe,’ she says flatly, pushing herself off the ground. ‘But you’ll only make this harder.’ She turns and walks away, and I am furious with her. She’s an evil puppetmaster, toying with everyone beneath her, and everyone is beneath her. Before I can stop myself I have shot her to the ground, the high, uncharacteristically feminine yelp that escapes her prickling at my senses in an uncomfortable yet enjoyable way. I have pinned her there with six metal pegs through her clothes, at her ankles, her waist and her wrists. I wish I’d hurt her. I look at her for a moment, lying there on her front, her cheek pressed against the floor, then I stride over and lean down to speak into her ear. 

‘No, you make this hard. You make this hard for every single person unfortunate enough to find themselves with powers. Except yourself. Well fuck you, Brooke. Fuck you.’ I say. Then, I brush my lips against her neck the way she did to me, last night, which feels like centuries ago. I hover there for a moment, breathing in the smell of her. Then I leave her there in the dark. 

 

CHAPTER 5

 

I drag myself into my room, which feels alien to me now. I feel as though I don’t belong in it anymore. My bed offers sweet, sweet solace, and I climb in tenderly, my entire body aching. I huddle under the covers and close my eyes, and go out like a light.

A hand over my mouth. There’s a hand over my mouth. I yell but it’s stifled, I try to jump up, and find myself incapacitated. Pinned down. Something hard, my entire hands. I don’t have the strength or the energy to get rid of it. It’s pitch black, my shutters are down, and I can’t see a thing, but I know. I can smell her. That spicy, vaguely floral scent. 

‘If you ever, ever dare to do anything like that to me again, you can kiss your life goodbye. I will lock you in a cell you cannot escape and you will never see another human being again. You will be lucky if you see a cockroach. Do you understand?’ she takes her hand off of my mouth, and as I wake up I feel the weight of her kneeling above me, one of her knees between my legs.

‘Fuck you,’ I exhale sharply.

‘Oh, Clair,’ she laughs. ‘It’s going to be so much easier for you if you just work out that I am in control. I have the power here. And you cannot win.’ 

‘Funny, you didn’t look very powerful face down on the arena floor-ah-AH!’ concrete digs into my wrists painfully, growing. 

‘Do you want to be locked up in a tiny little cell you cannot escape? Is that what you want?’ she snarls at me, and I begin to panic. ‘Because I will do it. Do not underestimate me. Do not underestimate what I am prepared for. I will do it now. I will take you there myself.’

‘Then I’ll fight you and win!’ 

‘You think just because you caught me off guard, with my back turned, with your little pegs, when I was trying to help you, that you could overpower me?’

‘You said yourself most abilities can break concrete…’ 

‘Yes, they can. Yet here I am. At the top. And there they are, locked inside Curdun Cay. You don’t have even the slightest clue what I am capable of. Now, I’m asking you.’ she lowers herself down, the full weight of her body on mine, and tucks my hair behind my ear again. ‘Are you going to play nice? Or do I have to lock you away, right now?’

‘I… I’ll fight you…’ I try to muster up some metal but it’s all gone and I am beyond exhausted. 

‘No, you won’t,’ she breathes, and then she leans in and kisses me softly. Tenderly. It doesn’t fit, it doesn’t fit her words, the way she kisses me. And she doesn’t stop. My entire body lights up, and I work hard to stifle the little moan of excitement that tries to get out of me as I try not to push my body into hers. This is the single most confusing thing to ever happen to me. And I like it. ‘Not fighting now, are you,’ she whispers, and I feel her hand suddenly at the hem of the camisole I wore to bed. Her cool fingers caress the skin on my abdomen, and I shudder, speechless as her hand travels beneath it, up towards, oh, oh my nipple, and she’s kissing me, oh god she’s kissing me so soft and sweet and she’s grinding against me, and I want her, I want her more now, more than ever before, more than that first night I met her, when I came up to this very bed and fantasized about this happening. Sixteen year old me is jumping for joy. ‘Tell me you want this,’ she breathes into my ear, and then she kisses my neck, flicks her tongue out in that sensitive little spot just below my ear lobe, then lands a tentative bite, which earns her an involuntary spasm of arousal that jerks my entire body around.

‘Yes!’ it comes out before I can stop it. It’s not a lie, anyway. She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know about the biting.

‘Tell me,’ she bites me again, harder, fingers deftly working both my nipples now, and I moan like a porn star. 

‘Yes, yes, I, yes,’ I breathe.

‘I need to hear you say it,’ she says, then she makes like she’s going to bite me but stops.

‘I want this,’ I respond, and she sinks her teeth into my neck and I cry out, pain and pleasure. She still won’t let my wrists free, and I want to touch her but I can’t. We kiss again, and she tastes oddly like pineapple, and I strain my head up to kiss her harder, taste her more. Her hand is back around my abdomen, toying with the elastic of my underwear, and I am so hot for her I may explode. ‘Yes,’ I urge her on, I want this, everything else has disappeared, I just want this.

‘Who’s in control,’ she says, and I know, I know I’m powerless.

‘You,’ I reply, if her being in control means her pulling me into a climax then I’m all for it right now.

‘Say my name,’ 

‘Brooke,’ her fingers breach the barrier and she’s so, so close. 

‘Tell me you will obey me,’ my body is raging and screaming for it, I want it more than I have ever wanted anything in my life.

‘Brooke, I will obey you,’ 

‘And you want me,’

‘I want you to fuck me,’ 

That does it. The first touch is like an explosion, and my breath is forced out of me, it’s like I’m winded, and she’s an expert, expertly working me into places of pleasure I’ve never been before, moving in ways I didn’t think possible, and I know now that Eleanor was an amateur, with Brooke’s teeth on my neck and her lips on mine and her breath in my mouth and her body on mine, and I want to feel her naked, I want to take off her clothes and fuck her back, but my wrists are stuck, and I strain at them, and she makes more concrete to hold me which hurts but the pleasure eclipses the pain tenfold because I’m so, so close, and I tell her that, and then I feel her smile into my mouth as she pulls away. 

‘No… no…’ I protest, weak ‘Please, please, please,’ I know it’s no use.

‘We’ll see if you’re a good girl tomorrow. And then we’ll see about finishing this. Sweet dreams.’ 

And then she’s gone. 

And my hands are still bound in concrete. 

 

CHAPTER 6 

 

Getting the concrete off my hands when I finally wake up with enough energy is great fun. I don’t have any metal, so I have to resort to slamming the giant shackle against my desk, hard. When it finally shatters after roughly eleven attempts and my hands come out deeply cut in several places, I make a mental note to never, ever be out of metal again. 

My fast healing quells most of the bleeding, although the cuts don’t seem to want to go away just yet, irritatingly. An idea hits me and I decide, in spite of my previous resolution, to wait until training before draining any metal. I gingerly dress myself for the day in a black t- shirt, tight black leggings and lace up black boots. I pin my hair back into place and spend a minute staring into the mirror, into my own hazel eyes, psyching myself up for the day. I will get my revenge, and I already know how.

I realize today that the ride to the training center in the back of the standard issue government car is long, and I make a point of asking several times how much longer it will be. I time it to be an hour and thirty-seven minutes. I am struck with satisfaction at the thought that Brooke traveled three hours and fourteen minutes just to touch me. Well, not just to touch me, but that was a part of it I’m sure. 

After several rounds of security clearance, I am finally let into the arena’s watch tower, and she’s there, waiting for me with her special training entourage, standing straight, her hands behind her back, a smug look on her face. I clench my fists behind my back to re-open my cuts. 

‘Good morning, Ms. Augustine!’ I exclaim chirpily, and I reach out to shake her hand. She reciprocates before she realizes, and her brow furrows when the handshake is wet. She looks down into her now bloody right hand, puzzled.

‘What’s this?’ she asks, glancing from side to side at the scientists and technicians flanking her.

‘You tell me,’ I grin, and shrug my shoulders. Her eyes flash with irritation, but just for a second. She can’t show emotion in front of her entourage. I want her to see what she did to me. 

‘Show me,’ she says, and I hold my bloody hands out. If she’s guilty, she doesn’t show it. ‘Now, I’m sure you know,’ she says, and a golden glow starts to circle around my hands as she uses her power to heal my cuts ‘that draining your element boosts your ability to heal?’ 

‘Oh, does it?’ I play dumb. ‘No, I didn’t. Guess that’s why I’m here. To learn.’ 

‘Yes,’ she narrows her eyes, and lets go of my hands. 

‘About that. I’ve decided that I’d like to move in here.’

‘Move in?’

‘There must be quarters for all your soldiers in training? I don’t care much for the one hour, thirty seven minute commute. Time I could spend training, instead of twiddling my thumbs in the back of a car. I want you to know that I am very serious about my training,’ I smile and try to look her right in the eye, but she avoids my gaze.

‘Well, I think that sounds like a very helpful and time efficient initiative,’ says a short, bookish looking man who I recognize as Dr. Tomlin, the resident medical professor and bio-terrorist genetic expert. 

‘Yes,’ says Brooke, smiling lightly. Good. She seems pleased. She must think she got her little message across. ‘It would make more sense. I will have it cleared with the white house and your possessions will be brought over today.’

‘Awesome.’ I say, smiling. ‘So, what have you got in store for me today?’ 

Today, I am unstoppable. My first drain of the day feels so good, after holding out for so long. The poor holograph making conduit can’t keep up with me, and I hear Brooke’s frustration with him over the intercom as I send barrages of hot metal into every single hologram he puts up. Every time I am tired, I think about what happened last night, the simultaneous fury and lust that Brooke inspires, the color of her eyes, the softness of her lips, and I am rewarded with a new burst of energy. I am quick, nimble and precise, and by the end of the day, exhausted. But I don’t let it show, even for a second. I’ll show her who’s a good actress. 

‘Alright,’ I hear her voice echo down, finally. ‘Enough. Let’s call it a night.’ 

‘Aw really?’ I yell up at the observation deck. ‘Because I could do more!’ 

‘That is excellent, Clair, but I think Eugene needs to rest. Stand down,’ she says, and the collective hum of the generators ceases, leaving me alone with the silence again.

I make my way towards the behemoth exit door, and when it slides down, she is behind it, alone. 

‘Excellent work today, Clair,’ she smiles at me politely, and I enter the elevator with her. ‘A marked improvement on yesterday.’ 

‘Thank you,’ I respond politely, not daring to look at her. The doors open to a floor I haven’t been to before, and a soldier in full uniform, gun in hand and a steely expression awaits us.

‘This is Agent S-184. He’ll show you to your quarters. I will see you tomorrow morning at 6am to resume training, and we will have some much better opponents on hand for you. Goodnight,’ she says, and she is already five paces away before I can even respond. So much for the continuation of our little rendezvous. 

‘Come with me,’ says Agent S-184, and I shrug and follow him down the corridor. He says nothing and his face reveals nothing, as we walk. He can’t be much older than me, but there is a hardness to his face that mine lacks. I need to get harder. 

‘So,’ I say ‘S-184, is it? What’s that short for?’

‘Shaun. I am the 184th recruit with a name beginning with S.’ 

‘Right, right. So, Shaun? I’m wondering if you might be able to help me with something…’

‘I am here to take you to your quarters. I do not have clearance to assist you with anything else.’ 

‘Yeah, but I was just wondering if you might know where they keep our information? It’s just that I think I gave them the wrong measurements, and my uniform is going to come in all wrong. But I really don’t want them to think I’m an idiot, you know? So I was thinking I might just go in and change them tonight?’

‘Nobody gets into Section 12 without proper clearance,’ he scoffs. ‘And pretty much the only person who ever gets proper clearance is Augustine.’ Section 12. Bingo. Big mistake, buddy. ‘You’ll just have to tell them.’ 

‘Oh, right. Okay. I guess I’ll do that then.’ I reply, smirking to myself. We walk in silence for a few more minutes, and finally come to a hallway with a ton of identical doors, each one numbered. 

‘These are your quarters. Your room number is 69. Here is your key card,’ he hands me a small sliver of yellow plastic. ‘Goodnight.’ 

He disappears down the hallway, and I swipe my card in the reader on door number 69. 

The room is spacious enough, sparsely furnished with a single bed and a desk. There are no windows. My things are in boxes stacked against the wall to the right, and on the left there is a door. I investigate and find a bathroom, and sigh happily, thankful that I don’t have to share one with a bunch of smelly soldiers in training. I pace around, searching for cameras, and thankfully there don’t seem to be any. 

I was going to sleep, but I’m too nervous about my plans for tonight, so I decide to unpack all of my things, to make this room feel a little more like home. I’m glad to be away from my stupid, boring family, but I feel a little uneasy, like I’m in prison, too. No. I have to remember that no prison can hold me. She has no idea.

A fair few hours later, I pocket my key card and slip out of my room quietly. I check up and down the hall. There are probably cameras here, but if there are I don’t see them.

Now to get to Section 12. I retrace the steps S-184 and I made earlier, until I am back outside the training arena. A sign is affixed to the wall with various pointers. ‘Sections 6-12’ directs me down a corridor to my left, and I pace quickly and quietly, thankful that there is nobody around. I pass sections 6 and upwards, and after roughly ten minutes I reach two large doors at a dead end, with a large number ‘12’ printed on them in thick white paint, and ‘AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY’ beneath it. I press my hand against the door, then laugh silently to myself. It’s made of metal. 

I walk right through it. This is the first time I’ve ever put my whole body through metal at once, and it’s a very odd feeling. I taste it on my tongue as I pass through, and the cold of it makes me shiver. But it feels good. 

I find myself in a room with a wide desk in front of a wall of filing cabinets. Easy. I tiptoe over, and find the very first cabinet, reading ‘A’. I pull at the handle, but it’s locked. Big woop. I push my finger into the lock and flick it sideways. I find it almost laughable, how unprepared for metal abilities they are. Sure enough, the file I’m looking for is right there. 

Augustine, Brooke. I scan the file as quickly as I can. I wish I had time to just sit down and read all of it, but I don’t want to get myself caught. I find it on the second page. Washington Training Facility Accommodation: Room Number 1. I should have known, she always has to be number one… I replace the file, and relock the cabinet. 

Now to find room number 1. I know it won’t be back with all the other rooms. Think, Clair, think… I remember a year or so ago, her mentioning that she enjoyed the view from her accommodation at the training facility here in Washington. I close my eyes and try to remember the outside of the training facility, as we were driving up to it. It’s in a tall triangular structure. At the top, there was what looked like an observation deck… the glass was blacked out, so I couldn’t see in. Could that be it? It’s possible. 

I find it easily, after just fifteen minutes of wandering around. But finding it isn’t the problem. 

The problem is that there are two agents guarding the elevator.

 

CHAPTER 7

 

I’ve never ambushed anyone in my life. I’m terrified. But it has to be done. 

I learned the knockout spot in a person’s neck from one of my father’s bodyguards a few years ago, when we received kidnap threats from a bunch of crazy anti government activists. I’m thankful for this now.

I shoot two blunt blocks of metal from each hand before they even realize I’m there. And they’re both passed out on the ground before they can make a sound. I cuff their hands and feet together and block their mouths, careful to leave their noses clear so they can still breathe. They won’t be interrupting. I’m impressed with myself. Better, I’m feeling absolutely invincible. 

I walk right through the metal doors of the key card operated elevator, and hit the only button in there. I’m nervous. I’m terrified. I’m buzzing with excitement. The elevator moves up soundlessly for what seems like forever, and I only know it’s stopped when I feel that odd sensation in my stomach. The doors open to a stunning, circular room, the spectacular view showing a full moon, along with the beautiful expanse of stars in the sky. I see a lounge suite on one side, and… bingo. A large bed. A large bed containing a sleeping Brooke. From here, in the moonlight, I can see the rise and fall of her chest. 

I tiptoe over to her, as quiet as a mouse, and look down at her. She looks so different, sleeping. The permanently hardened expression that she wears on her face awake has disappeared, replaced by a soft, peaceful look that I find so disarming, and I begin to question myself. No. I have to remember. She did this to me not 24 hours ago. Still, it can’t hurt to look a little more. She has kicked off her covers, and she sleeps in an old army t-shirt and little shorts. She looks so normal. So soft. It’s endearing. 

I encase her hands in metal as I crawl over her, and bind the metal to the bed frame. Her eyes open wide as I do this, and find mine staring back into them, my face now inches from hers.

‘Clair,’ she breathes, confused, still half sleep.

‘You know, you’re really not very well prepared for a person with metal abilities here.’ I say, smiling down at her. She seems to realize what’s going on now, and she strains to get up, groaning when she finds she can’t. 

‘Yeah, see, concrete can’t break metal. So I guess you’re plum out of luck, and you’re just going to have to listen to me,’ I mutter, staring right into her eyes. 

‘I will make you pay for this,’ she hisses, curling her upper lip like an angry feline. 

‘No, see, you did this to me last night. And I don’t take that kind of thing lying down, if you know what I mean,’ I say. ‘So I came up here to make you pay. You know,’ I smile, and I slide my fingers along the nape of her neck, and into her hair. ‘You look so beautiful when you sleep…’ 

‘You’re going to Curdun Cay,’ she says, her tone insistent, belligerent. 

‘Sure,’ I laugh. She’s not gonna send me to Curdun Cay. She would have done it already if she didn’t need me. ‘So, I was a pretty, uh, good girl today, wouldn’t you say?’ I run my fingers along her jawline and over her lips. ‘And I seem to remember you telling me that we were going to see about finishing something. Well, I waited for you in my room, and you never showed. So I thought I’d come remind you,’ I run my hands over her body, and feel her shudder just a little.

‘Stop,’ she says.

‘I don’t think you want me to stop,’ I reply, crafting a little blade from my metal. Fear washes over her face. ‘Don’t worry,’ I say ‘I’m not here to hurt you,’ I drag the blade up the front of her t-shirt, and pull it open to reveal her bare chest, the moonlight making her pale skin iridescent. She exhales slowly, and says nothing. I pull my shirt over my head and look down at her, looking up at me. Her face has softened at the sight of me half naked. I lower myself onto her, skin on skin, the way I’ve been craving so deeply, and she breathes a little faster as I kiss her neck softly. 

‘Give me my hands back,’ she demands. ‘Give me my hands back and I’ll finish what I started last night,’

‘Come on Brooke, I’m not that stupid.’ I bite her and a delicate moan escapes her lips, driving me crazy. I bite harder just to hear it again.

‘No, I want to, I-uh! I want to finish it,’ she pushes her body against mine, and I kiss her, properly. 

‘I don’t believe you,’ I say, and I start planting kisses until I reach a nipple, which I take between my teeth softly and lick, causing her to erupt with charged moans of arousal. So this must be her thing. Everybody has a thing. One little thing that drives them absolutely crazy. Mine is being bitten. I work the other one with my fingers and revel in the absolute craziness it inspires.

‘Let me - give me,’ she stutters, as I continue to lick, bite, caress. I reach down and stroke her gently, teasing, and she tries to stifle a whimper a little too late. I move up to face her again, and smile down at her confused, lustful expression.

‘I’ve wanted this for a long time,’ I say, and I lean down to plant a soft kiss on her lips ‘But not this way. Have fun getting yourself free. ’ I smirk, and begin to move away.

‘No… no!’ she exclaims, clearly panicking. 

‘Yeah, sorry to cut this little rendezvous short, but I’ve got an early start.’ I edge off of the bed and begin to walk away.

‘Don’t you DARE!’ she hisses across the darkness. I stop a few steps from the bed, and turn back to take her in, in all her trapped glory.

‘Great view, by the way.’ I say. ‘I remember you telling us all about it a while back at one of those dinners of ours. Extremely useful information for me, don’t you think?’

‘Very clever, Clair,’ she lets out, flatly. But I know she’s praising me. I pace towards the elevator, grinning, pleased with myself.

‘Well, it’s been great. I’ll see you in the morning, Brooke.’ I laugh softly, and hit the button. She says nothing. 

I can’t wait to see what she has in store for me tomorrow. 

 

CHAPTER 8

 

The next morning, I receive word that training has been postponed until 7am. I giggle to myself as I think of her trying and failing to get the metal off by herself, and having to call for help. What will they think? They’ll know. They won’t dare say a word to her, but they’ll know. She’ll swear them to secrecy, I’m sure.

At 6:59, I enter the arena observation area again, but she’s not there. I am greeted by Dr. Tomlin. 

‘Good morning, Miss. Kensington. Please head down to the arena directly, so we can get started.’

‘Where’s Ms. Augustine?’ I ask curiously. Dr. Tomlin smiles at me like he knows something I don’t.

‘Oh, she’ll be along shortly. Better get down there,’ he smiles again, and I quirk an eyebrow and make my way to the doors.

When I get down to the arena floor, everything is eerily quiet. No Brooke over the intercom, no holograms, not even the generators. How will they project the holograms without the generators?

I scope out the arena. The layout has changed. A behemoth concrete structure sits in the middle. It looks like a hybrid between a rocket ship and a giant spider. I approach it cautiously, and place a hand on the cool concrete. 

That’s when it starts to move.

I hear that all too familiar sound of shifting concrete, and pieces begin to levitate from the ground and circle around the structure. Slowly, Brooke emerges from within, staring down at me with an expression of pure hatred.

‘In case you hadn’t quite grasped the concept,’ she yells down ‘your training opponent today will be me.’

‘Do your worst!’ I yell back, grinning up at her.

‘Oh, and, also… a few of my agents have decided to join in…’ she smirks, and twenty D.U.P. agents flood in around me. ‘Good luck!’

That’s when the shooting starts, from all directions. And it HURTS. Getting shot HURTS. I send out a circular barrage of blunt metal to knock down the men shooting at me, and the bullets cease for a moment. Then I remember… I can control metal. I dodge concrete boulders that come crashing down from Brooke, or whatever she is right now, and grab the nearest agent’s gun. I wish I could see his face as I melt his gun into a sad little puddle. I bind his wrists and ankles in two sharp shots.

I’ve got to take care of these agents before I can take care of her. I make my way around the structure that is Brooke, dodging and weaving as she sends ever growing concrete boulders flying at my head, melting the guns of every agent I come across and using the metal to bind their wrists and ankles, mastering it, doing two at once, three, four. It’s not long before we are surrounded by fifty felled agents, wriggling like cockroaches that have fallen onto their backs. 

Now for Brooke. What to do? The second I take to ponder my next move costs me, and I move out of the way just a little too late. A boulder catches my back, tearing my shirt and ripping my skin raw. Her laughter echoes around the room as I scream in agony and begin dashing around as fast as I can, and I am so, so thankful for fast healing. 

Enough of that. I pull the metal from one of the many convenient sources placed around the arena, and fashion armor for myself, covering my entire body from head to toe with a thick layer of metal, which I keep warm where it needs to be so I can move around freely. 

‘Oh, armor!’ she laughs, mocking me ‘How smart. I wondered how long it would take you to figure that one out,’ 

I use the time she has taken to try to anger me to shoot fifteen metal spikes up in her direction, which she deflects just in time. ‘Let’s see how long it takes for you to get tired, shall we?’ she says, sending waves of concrete over the ground to try to trip me. I jump nimbly over each one. I need to get rid of this structure she’s made. 

I ground myself with my feet wide apart, place my wrists together and send a humongous piece of metal crashing into one of the legs of her structure, and it crumbles easily. I grin, and run around shooting barrages of metal into each leg as fast as I can, as she hurls boulders my way.

When I’ve reached the last one, a huge crack sounds, echoing throughout the arena, and her behemoth structure begins to fall. She comes down with it, and I rush over to encase her in metal but before I can, a huge slab of concrete knocks me off of my feet. She must have already been aiming when she was falling, which both irritates and impresses me. I roll over just in time to miss another, and as I’m getting onto my feet, another hits me right in the shoulder, knocking me down again. 

‘Okay I get it!’ I shriek ‘You’re angry! Stop!’ 

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she says flatly, and I jump up and dodge another slab. ‘This is a training exercise,’  
Another ripple over the ground makes me lose my footing, and this sparks my temper. I shoot hot shards of metal at her, nonstop, and it’s her turn to dodge. She flies around on her concrete thrusters, and I try shooting up at her but she’s too fast. Then it occurs to me that if she can fly on concrete, I should be able to fly on metal.

I send hot metal flying into the ground, and I am rewarded with being pushed up into the air. I keep pushing, and then I find something bizarre happens, something that goes against gravity… no, it’s magnetic. My metal is flying around my body, creating some strange magnetic space for me to float in. I can feel it around me and I can steer myself anywhere I want to go. I can’t help it, I let out a joyous laugh, and if I’m not mistaken, I can see her smiling from twenty feet away, too. Then concrete hits me in the stomach and I fall straight out of the air and hit the ground with a bone cracking thud. 

I am furious. How am I supposed to learn anything, if every time I try to grasp something new, I am knocked down? I’m not here to learn. I’m just here to be humiliated, to be shown who’s boss. I’m not going to win, she’s just going to keep at me until I give up and admit defeat. Well that’s not going to happen… not today. 

I use my new found levitation to pull myself upright, and pull from two metal sources behind me at once. My anger glows white hot inside me, and I swear I see red, swear I feel my eyes glowing. All of the metal I have already thrown around the room begins to float towards me, and I pull it into orbit. I am stronger than this. 

I am stronger than her.

She tries to hit me with boulders, slabs, barrages, but my orbiting metal debris is spinning so fast that it deflects every single shot. I shoot at her, sharp and fast, and after several misses I finally get a hit, right in her shoulder, and she recoils in pain and drops down a little. I use this moment to send another shard at her left shoulder, and then her stomach, her legs, until she’s barely above the ground. She keeps shooting at me, but I am untouchable now, and another of my shards catches her in the chest, and she drops to the ground. 

She’s coughing, and I float over to her inside my full orbit, almost a planet in itself, and look down at her, ready to bury her in metal.

As her coughing subsides and her fast healing kicks in, she looks up at me, and there’s real, honest fear in her eyes. She is genuinely terrified. My conscience flickers, and I slowly lower myself to the ground, feeling the red fade out of my eyes. I let the metal that was orbiting me fall to the ground. I pace over to her and reach out to her. I notice an evil smile begin to tease the corners of her lips just a second too late, and a tidal wave of concrete appears from behind her and brings me crashing to the ground, encasing my entire body, all but my eyes. I am completely unable to move. She strides over to me and looks down at me, smiling disdainfully.

‘Weak,’ she says ‘You’re weak.’ 

 

CHAPTER 9

 

She leaves me there for what feels like forever. It has to be at least an hour. The thing is, she was at my mercy, and that’s exactly what ruined me. Mercy. 

Next time I won’t be so soft.

But I was winning. There was no doubt about that. I would have won if it hadn’t been for my stupidity. I have to learn to be ruthless. Maybe that’s what she was afraid of. Because, if I was ruthless, she wouldn’t stand a chance. No one would.

A team of higher level agents who have been entrusted with Brooke’s ability come to remove me from the concrete, and I am stiff and sore when I finally get out. They escort me over to the exit doors and I am greeted on the top floor by Dr. Tomlin. 

‘Where’s Augustine,’ I ask through gritted teeth.

‘She’s been called to Curdun Cay, and won’t be returning until the early hours of tomorrow morning. You will complete psychological and historical training for the remainder of today.’

‘Right…’ I grumble, wincing as I feel a few bones that were impeded by concrete earlier snap back into place. 

Psychological and historical training is more grueling than any of the physical training could ever be. I am shown picture after picture of crime scenes, conduits, suspected conduits, even conduit sympathizers, murdered in cold blood, sometimes in disgusting ways. The idea that the D.U.P. is needed is drilled into me. I do see why. If murder and chaos is the alternative, and this is the best possible situation, then this is the way it has to be. 

At the end of the day, I am mentally exhausted. I am so, so glad to fall into my bed, and try to forget all of the horrible things I’ve seen through sleep. 

I am awoken by a hand over my mouth, accompanied by a vaguely floral, spicy scent. I can’t move my arms. And I can’t believe it. 

‘Really? Again? You really want to play this game?’ I ask incredulously. 

‘No,’ she sighs, ‘no more games now,’ and then she kisses me, and I realize it was only her hands on my wrists as she releases them. I reach up and grab her head in my hands and pull her into the kiss harder, sighing into her mouth, finally, finally… I travel the length of her with my fingertips as we kiss, and she doesn’t stop me. I reach her butt and pull her hips into mine, hard, and she smiles into our kiss. 

‘Are we really doing this?’ I ask, and she pulls away to look at me. ‘No messing around?’ I do my best puppy eyes, and I mean them. A mischievous smile takes over her mouth, and she sits up, pulling me with her, and pulls my shirt over my head. Is she just going to tease me and leave me hanging again? Oh god, I don’t care, she’s kissing my neck, my collar bone, my chest, my breasts, my stomach as she pushes me down to my back again. Then she tugs at my shorts, and I lift my hips to let her pull them off. I am entirely naked and at her mercy. 

She backs up a little, and pauses to stare at me. There’s a look I’ve never seen before. She crawls over me, and presses the full weight of herself into me. Her lips touch my earlobe. 

‘You’re perfect,’ she whispers, and then she sinks her teeth into my neck and I erupt into jitters of pure arousal as she bites me again, lower, lower, lower, and the bites turn into the flick of her tongue, and then back into bites, gentler, softer ones, and then into kisses. She leans back, and pushes my legs apart. Then, she kisses the insides of my thighs, then bites, oh god the biting, she knows, she must know because I am going crazy, and then I can feel her breath there and it’s almost too much to handle, her arms slide around me and then she’s doing things with her tongue I couldn’t even imagine were possible.

It barely takes her any time at all. I try, I try so hard to make it last but I can’t, and within a few minutes I’m convulsing like I’m possessed, and screaming like it too. 

She comes up smiling, and crawls back over me, and I’m gasping for air, pleasure shooting to my toes. I pull her close to me and bury my face in her neck, breathing in the scent of her, wanting to remember this moment, the moment Brooke Augustine made me come, forever. 

‘I think you earned that,’ she says, gloating, and I push at her playfully, which makes her pin my wrists down again. I stare up at her face over mine, searching for something new in her eyes. 

‘Brooke,’ I whisper into the air between us. 

‘Yes?’

‘I want to fuck you,’ I breathe, and she closes her eyes for a moment, exhaling softly. Then, she frees my wrists and sits up. I sit up with her still kneeling above me, and pull her shirt over her head. I push myself up so I’m on my knees too, and our bodies are pressed together. I place soft, tentative kisses on her collar bones, either side of her neck, her cheeks, the tip of her nose. Then I pull back to look into her eyes. ‘You’re beautiful,’ I say, and she closes her eyes again and says nothing. I kiss her then, and she kisses me back hard, her hands traveling up my back and pulling me in. I deftly flick the catch on her bra and throw it to the side, then duck down to take her left nipple between my teeth as my fingertips work the right. She throws her head back and sighs arousal, and I gently push her down to her back. 

‘Kiss me,’ she commands, and I obey. We kiss sweetly, and she tangles her fingers in my hair as I push my body into hers. ‘Now take off my pants,’ she says. ‘I want to feel your skin on mine,’ she breathes in my ear, and my head rushes a little. I crawl down and pop the buttons on her pants, and peel them off her as quickly as I can, taking her underwear with them. Now it’s my turn to stare.

She looks amazing naked, lying there, her hair mussed, her eyes shining, skin pale, body fit and muscular yet soft in all the right places. I’m dazed. I never imagined she’d look this good. In all my fantasies, I never could have pictured this. 

‘Come here,’ she says impatiently, reaching out and grabbing my arms to pull me down to her. The feeling of her soft skin against mine sends my senses into overdrive, and I become a little frantic, kissing and biting at her neck, my hands pushing her arms above her head to hold them there. She pushes back at me, and we’re sitting up again, with me in her lap. ‘I want you on your knees,’ she smiles, pushing me towards the edge of the bed. She points at the floor. I get off the bed, and down on my knees as she slides to the edge, and I look up at her. Her expression is triumphant. I push her legs apart, kissing her thighs as I go, and then I squeeze her butt as I plunge my tongue into her, and a guttural moan escapes her.

She directs me through it, teaching me things I didn’t even know as we go, and I love it, her voice, usually so smooth and clear, faltering more and more as I get her closer and closer, until she’s not talking anymore, just shaking, and, undirected, I reach up and work her nipples between my thumbs and forefingers and that’s when she comes, hard.  
She looks down at me and takes my head in her hands, a satisfied smile on her lips. ‘Well done,’ she breathes. I grin up at her and stand up, then I push her down and crawl over her. 

‘Stay with me…’ I whisper, and her eyes harden. 

‘I can’t,’ she replies, pushing me off of her. 

‘But-’ I sit up and she’s already pulling her pants on. 

‘It’s already nearly morning. No one can know. Do you understand?’

‘Yes…’ I sigh, feeling my face drop. She regards me for a moment, then scoops the rest of her clothes from the floor and sets about putting them on, turned away. I want her to stay with me. I want to hold on to her, to this night, to all of it. I want her to hold me and stroke my hair and tell me everything is going to be okay, but it’s so ridiculous to even think that could happen. What did I expect? She’s an ice queen. I’m staring at into my lap when I feel her hand on my arm. 

‘Clair… this has to stop.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I have had to pay the two guards that found me this morning, and the three defense force agents it took to get me free, ridiculous sums of money to ensure that they won’t talk about it. Anybody with half a brain could put together what went on last night after seeing me… like that. I cannot let a single speck of my personal life into the public eye. The public already dislike me because I am one of the bio-terrorists they so fear. Most of the anti bio-terrorist, anti drug groups that support us and fuel the public’s support are heavily religious. Which means most of them are also anti-gay. If anyone finds out… if anyone even suspects, my position will be in jeopardy. Do you understand?’ she asks. Of course I understand. Twenty one years of denial and hiding from my family and the world, I understand. I realize she’s been doing it twice as long as me. Is this the life I’m going to have to live? 

‘But you started it…’ I say feebly, thinking back to the hotel room.

‘I know,’ she sighs heavily, and reaches up to place a hand on my cheek. ‘When I want something, I tend to get it,’ she smiles, and I resent it, staring at her coolly. She retracts her hand.

‘I could have beaten you, today,’ I say.

‘Yes,’ she admits, quicker than I thought she would. I’m starting to think that she’s a different person at night. ‘You could have. The way you picked up levitation and orbit like that was amazing. I’ve never seen anything like it. You are going to be my D.U.P’s biggest asset.’ 

I say nothing, but my mind races a million miles a minute. What does she have planned for me? 

She leans in to kiss me, and I turn away, angry. I feel used. She just came her to get what she wanted, only to tell me it can’t happen anymore.

She kisses my neck instead, and I don’t have the will to push her away. ‘Kiss me…’ she whispers in my ear, and I am powerless. I oblige, and we share a bittersweet kiss, our hands in each other’s hair. After a while, she pulls away and gets up off the bed, and looks down at me wistfully. 

‘I don’t want you to go,’ I say, and I feel pathetic. She shakes her head and walks towards the door. She glances at her watch. 

‘Training is in an hour and a half. Don’t be late.’ 

And with that, she’s gone. 

It’s not over, though. I know it’s not over.

Even if she thinks it is… I’m going to make sure it’s not. 

 

CHAPTER 10

 

Training is grueling, and doesn’t stop. I do not get any leisure time. From dusk until dawn, seven days a week, I am on my feet, fighting, learning, experiencing, drilling every little thing over, and over, and over, and over.

One night, I stop to examine myself in the bathroom mirror, and find that my features have slimmed out, my cheeks have become more hollow, my shoulders stronger, my arms sinewy, my stomach tight and hard where it used to be soft, my legs muscular. I like my new physique. I feel harder inside, too. I feel ready to take out anyone who so much as looks at me the wrong way.

I want to take out anyone who so much as looks at me the wrong way. I feel so jaded.

That first day, I slinked into training grumpily after less than an hour of sleep, and did terribly. Brooke was not sympathetic. I remember her voice echoing through the arena ‘I’m beginning to doubt your abilities, Clair,’ ‘Work harder, Clair,’ ‘Not good enough,’ ‘If you’re not going to take this seriously, I may as well just lock you away,’ … she was ruthless. And I was furious. 

Every opportunity I had after that night, I tried to catch her eye. Tried to remind her of what happened between us. Tried to position myself as close to her as possible. But she would avoid my gaze, saunter off with purpose every time I got near. 

Days, weeks, months have passed… and she doesn’t even look at me. I try to get her alone, ask if I can talk to her in private, and she finds an excuse every single time, or just shoots me down. Her expression is permanently hard, her eyes always cold. I feel like I must have dreamed that night, dreamed her hand on my cheek, dreamed of that soft, loving look in her eyes. Dreamed of her voice saying ‘kiss me…’ 

And I do dream. I dream of her almost every night, in some way. Sometimes, she comes to my room again and holds me. Those dreams are the best ones. Others are bizarre. Spiders emerge from her hair and crawl all over me, and I scream, writhing around, swatting them away. We go together to a ball, but everyone must choose a partner and she doesn’t choose me. She encases me in concrete and leaves me there forever.

My family request that I return home to visit repeatedly, and I decline, for fear of missing an opportunity with Brooke, and because I feel completely disconnected from them now, from my life before. I guess I never felt all that connected to it anyway. They don’t understand me. They never did.

I am happier here. I’m exhausted, and sometimes I wish I could just spend the day in bed, reading a book or even watching crappy TV shows, but it’s okay. If only Brooke would look at me. I don’t understand why she’s doing this. I didn’t take her seriously, that night when she told me it had to stop. I keep replaying that last kiss, over and over. If I had known it really was going to be our last kiss, I would have pulled her closer. Kissed her harder. I wouldn’t have let her go.

My infatuation grows more and more with every day that she ignores me, and I am consumed by thoughts of her, will talk of nothing but her with the other trainees, just to see what I can find out, but I don’t find out much. She has artfully concealed absolutely everything she can. 

I wonder what she’s thinking. Try to imagine how she feels, looking down at me every day, watching me getting stronger and stronger. Does she yearn for me the way I do her? Does she even care? Or was I just some conquest to her? She goes away to Curdun Cay frequently, and sometimes spends days on end there. I miss her every second she is gone. Is there somebody else? The thought of there being somebody else makes me so angry my eyes start to glow red.

It is amazing what withholding something will do to a person. I wonder if I would want her this much if I could have her. I think I would, still. I know the tricks my brain is playing on me, I know I’m consumed by this because I can’t have her, but it doesn’t stop me feeling the way I feel. 

I hope this is as hard for her as it is for me. When I think about the way she was that night… how she came to me, no concrete, no games… the way she looked at me when she took off my clothes… when I think about that, I know she wants me still. She has to want me still. 

So every night as I close my eyes, I hope she’ll show up again. 

But she never does.

 

CHAPTER 11

 

I graduate from training with flying colors, at the top of every scoreboard. A graduation ceremony is held, and Brooke shakes the hand of every graduate, as they pass her by in a line, and a lanky looking young man next to her hands them their graduation certificate. My heart races. This will be the first time we have touched in months. I see her eyes flicker over to me as she shakes the hand of the guy in front of me, greets him by name and congratulates him. 

I walk towards her, and she has no choice but to look right into my eyes, where I hope she sees the fire, the burning, the wanting. 

‘Our top graduate. Well done, Clair. We are very proud of you,’ she smiles lightly, and reaches out to me. I look down at her hand for a few seconds, not reaching back, and look back up to her eyes to see that they have widened. She’s worried I’m going to do something. Everybody is looking at us, looking at me, standing motionless, her, her hand outstretched. I sigh and reach back to shake her hand, and we both gasp and jump back as a white spark flies between our palms, jolting us. Murmuring erupts down the line of trainees behind me. She narrows her eyes at me as if she thinks I did it on purpose. 

‘Static,’ I shrug ‘It happens,’ I squeeze her hand harder than I should, then let go. The lanky guy passes me my certificate and I walk away, and I can feel her gaze burning into the back of my head. An actual spark flew between us. I can’t believe it. I look at my hand and see a dark red mark slowly fading, and wonder how static could have done that. Is there actual electricity between us? 

For the first time since I got here, I have the afternoon to do what I want. I spend some time wandering around, peeking into the various training facilities. I watch some new recruits training, and think about how far they have to go. I feel strong, accomplished. 

I find myself back at the arena, disused at the moment, and I take the elevator up the observation deck. I stand in Brooke’s usual spot, and put my hands behind my back, trying to imagine myself as her, torturing me with her indifference. 

‘Miss Kensington!’ I almost jump out of my skin, ‘There you are! I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’

I turn to see the lanky guy from this morning, holding a black covered file in his hands.

‘Sorry… what was your name again?’ I ask.

‘I’m Gilligan. I work in administration. This is for you,’ he hands the file to me. ‘From Director Augustine.’ 

‘Oh… thank you,’ I say, taking it from him, my pulse quickening. What is it? 

‘Well, I’ll let you get back to your… wandering,’ he smiles at me, that gross smile guys do when they think you’re cute, and I stare at him coolly. The second I am sure he is gone, I frantically scrabble to find the catch on the file. I open it up to see a letter.

Dear Clair,

Congratulations on graduating from the D.U.P. training program. 

In light of your superior aptitude, high scores on intelligence and critical thinking tests, and your general attitude regarding training and the D.U.P, you have been drafted to join our core Intelligence and Strategy team.

Attached is your contract, please sign and return Administration as soon as practicable. 

Regards,

Brooke Augustine  
Director  
Department of Unified Protection

I read it back three times. She wants me as part of her core team. Intelligence and Strategy is what drives the whole operation. I’m ecstatic, elated… I was scared, I wondered what was going to happen, whether I’d be seeing her anymore now that training is over… there’s my answer. I will. 

I exit the observation deck and almost break into a run down the corridors to the administration office, such is my desire to sign this contract and accept. 

I read it again as I’m moving, ‘superior aptitude’ making me smile, discounting every harsh word and ‘not good enough’ that ever echoed into that arena. I’m so caught up reading the letter over and over again, I don’t see that someone is coming down the corridor in the other direction, and I almost crash straight into them, if it wasn’t for their hands on my shoulders stopping me at the last second. I look up from my letter, and there she is.

‘Brooke…’ I utter, my breath catching in my throat. 

‘I see you got my letter,’ she says, an expression of amusement on her face. I am mortified that she saw me practically running right in the direction of Administration, obviously to sign it.

‘Yes, I – thank you.’ I manage. She glances over her shoulder, then swoops closer to me, and my heart jumps into my throat, for a second I am so sure she is going to kiss me. She grabs my wrist, hard, and pulls me in so she can speak to me quietly. 

‘Listen to me. If you ever pull anything like that again, you can forget about this letter. Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear enough. This can’t happen,’ she hisses. 

‘I didn’t do anything!’ I yelp, and I feel as though I could cry. Why is she so angry? I was feeling so elated thirty seconds ago, why does she have to ruin it?

‘Don’t lie to me, Clair. Don’t think I haven’t noticed what you’ve been doing. Incessantly interrogating every single person in this facility for information about me. I’m telling you to stop. Do you understand?’

‘I’m not interrogating anyone!’ fury rises in me, and I shake her grip off and pull back so I can look into her eyes. My fury is reflected. ‘And I don’t know what happened this morning. I really don’t know what that was.’ I say, pleadingly. I want her to know I’m not lying. 

We stare at one another for a while, and then some kind of switch seems to flip in her head, she looks like she’s realized something. Her face softens, briefly, then returns to the hard, angry expression from before.

‘I don’t have time for this,’ she says flatly, and she pushes past me. 

‘Brooke, wait, please, I –’ I reach out to stop her and our hands brush each other, and we are jolted again by yet another spark. 

‘Don’t touch me!’ she exclaims, and before I can even think she has me up against the wall, her fist inches from my face. ‘Don’t ever touch me again,’ she growls. ‘And if you put one foot out of line I will have you locked up.’

‘You can’t lock me up,’ I say, and the sureness in my voice seems to make her skin crawl. She moves away from me, cautiously glancing up and down the corridor again. Then, she stares right at me.

‘I can do worse than lock you up,’ she says, her voice clear and calm. She turns on her heel and walks away from me, and I am reeling so hard from her words, I can’t even move. 

She would kill me if she felt it necessary. 

 

CHAPTER 12

 

I am not going to behave myself. I am going to play her, and win. I know she didn’t mean it. She was just trying to scare me away. She’s been making hollow threats for a long time.

My first Intelligence and Strategy team meeting is today. I’m not going to act up, or do anything… per se. But I have a plan.

To my delight, it starts working the second I walk into the room. Ten middle-aged men sit around the heavy glass table in the center of the room, and Brooke stands at the head, in front of a projection screen. 

They all stare up at me, and some of their mouths drop open. I am wearing the tightest little black top I could find, with no bra. Black pants so tight I can hardly walk in them. Black suede heels. My hair cascades down my back, and my make up is flawless. After I got ready, I ashamedly spent at least ten minutes vainly staring at myself in the mirror, feeling grateful for my mother’s model genes, and glad my father is shallow, and married for looks, not love. I examined the arch of my eyebrows, the straight line of my nose, the fullness of my lips, the sharp, clean line of my jaw, the orange-hazel of my eyes, and, shallowly, I thought to myself, of course she wants me. How could she not? And then I shook my head at myself and remembered that looks are not what desire is about, not really. Not at the very core of it. 

But oh yes, my plan is going perfectly. I slide into the only spare seat, sandwiched between two of the aforementioned men, who both continue stare at me. 

I sneak a glance up at Brooke, and catch her eyes on my chest, her jaw clenched. I know what arousal looks like on her face, and I know what anger looks like too, and this is something in between. I love it. She clears her throat.

‘Let’s get started shall we? As mentioned in the memo last week, Agent Kensington has now joined our team, replacing Agent Yannes, who we can all agree wasn’t contributing anything of note,’ she says tartly. The men around the table murmur in agreement, their eyes never leaving me for a second. 

Brooke pushes a stack of documents towards the middle of the table. ‘Please turn to page 6,’ she says, and everybody leans in to grab their copy. The man across from me stares sleazily at my chest as I lean over. I shudder inwardly and resist the urge to fling my file in his face, instead giving him a sultry smile while Brooke looks on.

She begins to speak about the highest bio-terrorist risk areas and recent captures of note, and I fish my reading glasses out of my bag and perch them on my nose not quite properly, feeling the gaze of every man in the room burning into me. I pull out a pen, press the end of it lightly on my lower lip, and begin reading along with Brooke’s speech. 

The meeting goes on and on, and we toss ideas around about bio terrorist detection and capture. These men are all highly intelligent, and taking that into consideration, I can’t believe the way they are all staring at me like schoolboys. I suggest that we target low socioeconomic areas by offering small cash rewards to anyone who turns bio terrorists in to the D.U.P. It won’t cost us much, but the junkies and the jobless will take money wherever they can get it. The men around the table agree that it’s a good idea, all smiling lecherous smiles at me, and Brooke avoids looking at me but concurs and says she will begin implementation. I feel immensely proud of myself. 

As the discussion goes on, I keep doing things to catch their attention, rolling my pen over my lower lip, tossing my hair back, pushing my chest out, leaning over… I know they’re all looking, but the one person I really want to look at me seems to be avoiding it entirely. I steal glances at her where I can, and her jaw seems to clench more and more as the meeting goes on. Finally, she ends it, and we all get up, the men chatting amongst themselves. One of them approaches Brooke and they begin talking quietly, and I stand watching them. 

A hand finds my arm.

‘Clair. I don’t believe we’ve met before,’ he reaches out a hand for me to shake. ‘James Beaumont, head of International Operations,’ 

‘Nice to meet you,’ I smile, fluttering my eyelashes, and I see his eyes flash with desire. This is my guy. As far as older men go, he’s not bad I guess. He has a good jawline, ice blue eyes, and graying hair. 

‘So you’re fresh out of training, huh?’ he smiles.

‘Yes, one week today,’ 

‘I hear trainees don’t get to have much fun, is that right?’ he’s grinning at me and subtly sidling closer. He thinks I don’t notice. Brooke walks past us, watching us out of the corner of her eye, and strikes up a conversation with a man just a few feet away. Perfect. 

‘Yeah, it’s full on. Seven days a week!’ I exclaim.

‘So uh, listen…’ he leans in closer and lightly runs his hand down my arm. I resist the urge to swat him away, because I can feel Brooke’s gaze burning into me. ‘If you do feel like having some fun, now that your training’s over, I’ve got a suite at the Willard, and they mix a mean martini…’ he oozes confidence, he seems absolutely certain there’s no other answer but yes. The sleazebag. 

‘I uh-’

‘Thank you for your time today, everybody,’ Brooke says loudly, to the entire room, before I can finish my sentence. ‘I believe this room is now needed by the International Operations Department,’ 

Everybody begins to shuffle out, and she strides towards James and I. 

‘Agent Beaumont, I believe you’re heading up the next meeting?’ she says. He glances back and forth between us, obviously deciding whether or not to say anything more to me; clearly he wants his answer. 

‘Yes, correct,’ he says to Brooke, looking mildly annoyed.

‘Good. I’ll expect the agenda and notes on my desk later. Agent Kensington, could I please speak with you privately?’ she asks, and before I can respond she has turned on her heel. I smile and shrug at the sleazebag, and hurry after Brooke before he can ask me again. 

We exit the meeting room and turn right down the corridor, and she’s walking ahead of me with her fists clenched, so fast I can barely keep up. We reach the end of the corridor, and come to a heavy door that reads:

Brooke Augustine  
Director 

So this must be her office… she opens the door and gestures for me to enter. I walk inside, and the room is bare except for a black desk that holds a large computer screen, and a leather chair. Black Venetian blinds adorn the large window, painting stripes across everything. I turn to see her double lock the door. She throws the keys at her desk and strides towards me, her eyes fierce, jaw clenched. When she reaches me she doesn’t stop, and I am forced to step backwards until I hit the wall, and there is nowhere else to go. 

Then, she pushes her hands into my hair and kisses me with such force I think we might actually merge. I slide my hands inside her jacket and pull her closer, and this feels like an explosion, like fireworks, like heaven, it’s been so long. She pulls away and buries her face in my neck, and she squeezes my breasts and sinks her teeth into me so hard I cry out in pain, pleasure, pain, pleasure, pain, I don’t know which is stronger. I push her jacket off her shoulders and run my hands down her back as she bites me again, then I push my hands down the back of her pants and squeeze her butt, and her skin is so soft, and she’s biting me again and again and her fingers have found the button of my pants. She deftly flicks it open and unzips them, then slides her hand inside but doesn’t touch me. She pulls back to look at me, and touches me as lightly as possible, teasing me, making me want it even more, if that’s even possible.

‘Please…’ I whimper. Not this again. 

Her free hand closes around my neck, and my eyes widen, staring into hers. 

‘Tell me you’re mine,’ she commands, and I gasp for breath. ‘Tell me you’re mine,’ she repeats, louder this time.

‘I’m yours,’ the words escape me, mangled. I stare into her eyes and she stares back, and I know I’ve got her. I know I’ve won this one. ‘I’m yours,’ 

This seems to satiate her desire for dominance. Her hand leaves my neck and she’s kissing me again, and my breath catches in my throat and I shudder with sheer relief as she appeases me, working me into ecstasy again, finally… I reach down and unbutton her pants, and she doesn’t stop me this time, and then we’re rocking against each other, and I slide my spare hand up her sweater and under her bra as I kiss her neck, and a moan escapes her lips as I work her nipples alternately, and she places her palm against the wall to steady herself as we fuck, hard, and I kiss her again. I don’t know how she knows exactly what to do to drive me crazy but she knows, she just knows. I can’t believe this is happening, I silently beg for it not to be a dream. 

‘I’m… coming…’ I mutter into her ear. 

‘Together,’ she replies, and she pulls back a little to stare into my eyes as we work each other into climax, and I don’t want it to end but it has to, and we’re both shaking, our breath labored and shallow, and I love the way she looks right now, her hair disheveled, her cheeks pink, a sheen of sweat on her forehead as she moans softly, her eyes closing briefly then opening again to stare back into mine, and then we come together, shaking and staring into each others eyes, and it is the single most intense moment of my life so far. 

Her arms envelope me, and she pulls me into a deep kiss, and we hold each other so tight it hurts. 

‘Brooke…’ I trail off, after a while. There are so many things I want to say to her. I can’t believe how easy that was. Jealousy is a powerful emotion, I don’t know why it never occurred to me before. 

‘Tell me you weren’t going to go to that man’s hotel…’ she says, and it’s clear she’s trying to keep the emotion out of her voice but I can hear it. I burst into laughter. She pulls away and buttons up her pants, a confused expression on her face.

‘Of course not, and I can’t believe you would think I would!’ I exclaim, buttoning my own. ‘It worked, though, didn’t it?’ I grin, and realization seems to hit her. ‘I knew it wasn’t over. I knew it.’ I say, and I reach out to touch her but she swats my hand away. 

‘You can consider it over now,’ she says coldly, crouching to pick up her jacket and brushing it off. 

‘Oh sure, sure,’ I say, still gloating. ‘You know, I never thought you would be so easy to manipulate…’ 

‘Get out,’ 

‘You, so smart, so on the ball, always running a mile ahead of everyone else… and I made you jealous,’ I keep on. I want to infuriate her, I want her to feel stupid, the way I have for months on end.

‘Get out!’ 

‘And it was so easy…’ I move towards her, and she stands her ground. ‘You know what I think, Brooke? I think you care.’

‘You are nothing,’ she spits, ‘nothing. Now get out of my office.’

‘What was it? Tell me you’re mine?’ I repeat her words, and my own voice sounds so cruel it surprises me.

‘Yes, well, that was for your benefit,’ she says. ‘That’s what you want, after all, isn’t it? To feel wanted. To feel needed. Otherwise what are you? Just a pathetic little girl with no direction,’ her voice is cold, and her words hurt, because I do want her to want me, I do want her to need me. I won’t let it show.

‘Well for a pathetic little girl with no direction, I sure did a good job of manipulating you into sex, didn’t I?’ 

‘Yes, well done, you triumphed in your little game. I’m glad you found it in yourself to do something other than stare at me longingly, because I really was starting to tire of that. Now please put those manipulation tactics to good use for the D.U.P, and stop focusing your energy on me, because as I have told you repeatedly, this can’t happen,’ 

‘It’s never going to be over, Brooke,’ I say, and I step close to her. She tries to push me away but I grab her arms and push back, leaning in to speak into her ear. ‘Because no matter what you say or do, I know the truth. You want me. You’ve wanted me for a long time. If you didn’t want me, you never would have come near me. And if you didn’t care… you wouldn’t have marched me in here and fucked me up against that wall the way you just did, to prove your power, to prove you can have me. You can make whatever excuses you want, insult me all you like, threaten to lock me up or even to kill me… but I know that was real, when you wanted me to tell you that I’m yours. Because you want me to be yours, and the thought of me with someone else makes you angry, makes you want to claim me. Well, I’m right here,’ I pull back and look into her eyes. ‘I’m right here, and I’m yours.’ 

She regards me for a moment, her expression unreadable. Then she strides over to the desk and picks up the keys to her office, and unlocks the door. People are hovering outside the meeting room down at the far end of the corridor. 

‘Thank you for your time, Miss Kensington,’ she says, holding the door open for me, and I have no choice. Her face is stony, her eyes glazed over. I sigh, defeated, and walk out. 

The door closes behind me abruptly, and I hear her lock it again. 

 

CHAPTER 13

 

I feel sick. Why did I just lay it all out there like that? I pace back and forth in my room, which I have to give up tomorrow for a new trainee. My things are all back in boxes, and I have absolutely no idea where it is I will be sleeping tomorrow night as I haven’t yet been told. 

I also have absolutely no idea where I’m going to go from here with Brooke. I don’t know why, but the way she looked at me, the way she asked me if I was really going to go to that man’s hotel room, the way she wanted me to say that I was hers… it made me think I could say those things.

My stomach is churning. How could she be so heartless? Just kick me out like that? I don’t understand. One second she looks at me like she wants nothing else in the universe more, the next her eyes are dead and soulless, and I am nothing to her. It’s like she’s two different people.

I remember the Brooke that came to my room that night. The way she sighed ‘no more games’ in the darkness. The way she kissed me goodbye. The way she admitted I could beat her. Has she forgotten that? That I could beat her? That if it really came down to it, and we had to fight for some reason, I would win? 

I don’t know. I sit down on the edge of my bed and coat my hands in metal, an art which I have perfected and enjoy. It calms me. I watch it flowing over them, liquid silver. I fashion a perfect sphere and use my magnetic field to make it hover between my hands, and watch as it spins slowly. A little world in my hands. 

I sigh, retract all my metal and collapse backwards on to the bed. There’s no way I can even think about going to get dinner. I listen to the sound of my breathing and try to think of nothingness, and eventually, I fall asleep in my clothes.

 

‘Clair… Clair…’ a voice calls my name, softly. ‘Wake up…’ 

I feel my hair being stroked, it’s nice… I register the scent of her perfume. I love it so much. I must be dreaming again. A kiss lands on my cheek, and then my other. I open my eyes.

She’s there, in the darkness. I can just barely make out her features. I’m not dreaming. I reach up and place my hand on her cheek, and she exhales slowly. 

‘Tell me again,’ she says softly. She doesn’t have to tell me what she means.

‘I’m yours…’ I say into the space between us. Silence falls, and there is only the sound of our breathing in the darkness.

‘And I am yours,’ she replies, finally.

‘You’re mine?’ 

‘I want us to be together,’ she strokes my cheek, and I conclude that this really must be a dream after all. 

‘Kiss me,’ I demand, and she leans in and kisses me, softly, sweetly, in such contrast to the way she kissed me earlier. She climbs under the covers with me and I nestle into her, still sleepy. ‘What about all the things you said? About people finding out?’

‘We can keep it a secret. We have to. For both our sakes.’

‘I know,’ I whisper. I wish we could live in a different world, where it doesn’t have to be this way. 

Since graduation, my joining the D.U.P. has been highly publicized, but I have declined to interact with any media whatsoever. What hasn’t been released to the public, is that I am one of their hated bio-terrorists. Better that way. 

‘And I’m not nothing?’ 

‘You’re not nothing,’ she replies.

‘And I’m not a pathetic little-’

‘I’m sorry,’ she says. 

‘I can’t believe you’re apologizing. You know…’ I trail off. 

‘What?’ she asks.

‘I have this theory… that you are different person at night.’ 

‘Hm… I am calmer at night,’ she muses ‘when everything is quiet.’ 

‘What are we going to do about the daytime?’ Are you going to ignore me?’

‘I’m going to treat you the same way I treat everybody else. We can’t risk suspicion.’

‘Okay… okay.’ I say. ‘Will you turn on the light? I want to look at you.’ 

She reaches over to the bedside table and flicks the lamp on. She is illuminated by the soft, warm light, and I prop myself up on my elbow so I can look at her. We kiss again, and I smile into it. ‘I’ve wanted you since the first day I ever saw you,’ I say, into her mouth. She pulls away. ‘I’ll remember it forever. I was sixteen-’

‘Oh, please don’t say that,’ she winces, and I laugh softly. I had never even thought about our age difference. 

‘That hadn’t even occurred to me,’ I say, and she opens her mouth to speak but I cut her off. ‘Anyway, I was sixteen… and you walked into the dinner hall, and I was floored. I’d never felt attraction until I saw you. Not really.’ I smile, and she’s looking at me, listening, her expression soft. I probably shouldn’t tell her all this but I want to, I want to let it out. ‘I watched you, all night,’

‘I know,’ she smiles knowingly ‘It wasn’t subtle,’

‘I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t take my eyes off of you. That night, I dreamed about having sex with you. I could hardly breathe when I woke up. Every time you’d attend a dinner, or a function, or anything… every time I saw you, I’d dream that night. Every single time. It was amazing.

‘About having sex with me?’ 

‘Always,’ I blush, and avert my eyes.

‘Tell me more…’ she says, a sultry smile on her lips.

‘Well, it’s all blurry now…’ I try, embarrassed.

‘You must remember the first one…’ she strokes my cheek, that smile making me want her, badly.

‘Well… you uh, came into my room and started taking off my clothes…’ I begin, and she sits up and straddles me as her hands find the hem of my top. I lift my arms and she pulls it off.

‘Like this?’ she asks, grinning as she unzips my pants and pulls at them, and finds that removing them is difficult ‘How tight are these!?’ she exclaims, and I sit up to help her. 

‘I wanted to get your attention…’ I blush

‘Well, you certainly got the attention of all those pigs at the meeting. I’ve never seen them like that before. Quite disgusting,’

‘I’m sorry…’ I say, and we finally get my pants off. 

‘Don’t ever do that again,’ she says authoritatively, and I almost resent it for a moment, but I think about why she’s saying it and don’t.

‘I promise…’ I give her my puppy eyes, and she smiles at me and tucks my hair behind my ear. 

‘So… what did I do next?’ she asks, and I realize I am already naked. Right. I didn’t put on underwear today. 

‘Uhm,’ I blush, averting my eyes. 

‘What!?’ she asks, pushing me down to my back and crawling over me. She leans down and kisses me, soft, sweet little kisses. ‘Tell me…’ she murmurs into my mouth. 

‘You… bound my wrists together. Above my head.’ I cringe a little before opening my eyes to see hers glinting with mischief.

‘I like that…’ she whispers, and she pushes my arms up above my head. I feel cool, smooth concrete secure my wrists. I wish she would have made it this way before. ‘And then?’ 

‘You told me to close my eyes,’

‘Close your eyes…’

‘And you… um…’ 

‘Tell me…’

‘You… ran your tongue from my chest to my neck…’ my voice goes a little high, and I feel embarrassed, but she obliges, and I feel my body light up with arousal ‘and then blew cool air where you had licked me…’ she blows, cool, slow, and I shiver a little. ‘Then you bit me… lightly… sort of… all over- uh’ she bites ‘-yeah, until you reached my- yeah, oh –’ she reaches my neck, and rolls my nipples between her thumbs and forefingers as she sinks her teeth into me. ‘Yes…’ I whimper. 

‘And then…’ she whispers in my ear, flicking her tongue out in that sensitive spot just below it, making me lose my breath. 

‘You said, you cannot escape me, Clair…’

‘You cannot escape me, Clair,’ 

‘And, you belong to me now…’

‘You belong to me now…’ her voice is guttural, sexy, strained with arousal. My senses are on high. 

‘And, you will never find anybody who can fuck you like I can…’

‘You will never,’ she pauses for a moment to bite me again ‘ever, find anybody who can fuck you like I can… I mean it…’ she adds, and I push my body up against hers, wanting to rid her of her clothes. It’ll have to wait, this fantasy has to stay the same… 

‘And, so you may as well give in…’

‘So you may as well give in…’

‘I give in… fuck me. Fuck me, Brooke…’ I utter, and she reaches down and then she’s inside me and I cry out with sheer pleasure as she instantly locates the elusive g-spot which every women’s magazine loves to talk about, and my dream was right, and she is right, I will never, ever find anybody who can fuck me like she can. ‘And- you- uh! Oh my fucking, yes, keep doing – uh, you, you k-kissed me,’ I manage ‘as you were-’ her lips meet mine and she kisses me so deeply, the way you only can when you’re in the full swing of sex, and I’m moaning into her mouth and straining against my concrete bind and then my metal smashes through it, and I sit up, taking her with me, and scrabble at her pants as she keeps fucking me, pulling them down just enough so I can get my hand inside her panties and we’re still kissing, and then we’re both moaning and I know what she likes now, quick little circles, and I do it.

‘Oh fuck, FUCK…’ she moans into my mouth, and the feeling that I am making her moan like that sets me off and I erupt into the best orgasm of my entire life, shaking uncontrollably as a tidal wave of pleasure spreads to the very last hair on my head, to my little toes. I am determined, fervent, impassioned, still shaking with aftershocks, I push her down and tear her clothes from her as quickly as I possibly can, and then she’s naked, pulling me onto her so she can kiss me, and I grind against her as we kiss, and she drags her nails up my back and bites at my lower lip which only adds to the pleasure. ‘I want your tongue,’ she says, and I crawl down, planting kisses as I go, then I push her legs apart and kiss the inside of both her thighs, alternately, over and over until I get there and she sighs deep pleasure when I do, and I remember every little thing she told me that first time and I am ten steps ahead of her. She knots her hands in my hair and pulls me deeper, and I reach up and work her nipples just the way she likes. ‘You… are… so… fucking… amazing…’ her words are strained, breathed, broken. I pull her into orgasm and she moans my name once, twice, three times, clawing at the bedsheets, holding bunches of them in her fists like she’s scared she’s going to float away. I come up, and smile up at her. She opens her eyes and looks down at me.

‘And you,’ I flick my tongue out again and she jolts with an electric shock of unexpected pleasure ‘will never find anyone who can fuck you like I can…’ I grin and crawl back up again, and press my body against hers. She sighs deeply and wraps her arms around me, holding me tight. 

‘You are without a doubt, the best sex I have ever had…’ she mutters.

‘Really?’ I ask, ecstatically. 

‘Oh yes…’ she breathes. We stay there, just breathing for a while, and I love the way her body feels against mine, love feeling her breathing beneath me. The scent of her perfume, mixed with mine, mixed with sex. Us together. I can’t believe I am the best she has ever had. She’s got twenty years of sex on me, how is that possible? 

‘Really better than all the others?’ I probe.

‘Yes!’ 

‘How many, uh, others…’ I say quietly. She sighs. 

‘Some. You don’t need to worry about that,’ she deflects me. 

‘But-’

‘Just don’t worry about it. Just… just know you’re the best. Ever. Be proud,’ she strokes my hair with one hand and squeezes my butt with the other. I decide not to probe any further into the matter, but I still want to know.

‘Will you sleep here? With me?’ I ask, and my heart thumps in my chest at asking such a serious question.

‘Yes. But I will have to leave before it gets light, okay?’

‘Okay…’ I nestle down and rest my head on her chest, and I can hear her heart beating steadily. She is calm. 

‘Come on,’ she pushes at me ‘let’s turn off the light and sleep the right way up…’ 

‘Why, I’m so comfortable…’ I protest, smiling. She considers this for a second, then pushes me off and laughs at my expression. 

‘Hold on…’ she utters, and she positions herself perfectly for me to sleep curled into her. ‘Come here…’ 

I give her one last moody look, then find myself nuzzling her neck and running my finger slowly around her right nipple, my right leg over hers. She reaches to the side and flicks the light off, and I kiss her neck and continue running my finger around her nipple.

‘Stop, you’re turning me on again…’ she mutters. 

‘Mmm…’ I sigh into her neck and flick my tongue out, then pull at her nipple lightly. She exhales sharply in response, and I slide my hand down her body. ‘I want to make you come again…’ I whisper in the darkness. She sighs.

‘We’re not going to sleep tonight, are we…’ 

 

CHAPTER 14

 

Consciousness comes to me slowly, and I struggle to open my eyes. I reach out, but she isn’t there. She never was there, of course. It was just my dreams playing tricks on me, as per usual. I sigh, and close my eyes again. Maybe if I go back to sleep she’ll come visit my dreams some more…

I roll over, and my movement disturbs a spicy, vaguely floral scent… my eyes fly open. I run my hands down my body and find it naked. 

And there, sitting neatly folded on the pillow next to mine, is a note. 

I scramble up to a seated position and unfold it as quickly as I can without tearing it.

Day has come, but I won’t adore you any less, my beautiful. I’m still the same me who kissed you all night long. Your lips will haunt me all day, and tonight, I’ll kiss them again. Until then… 

-B 

An absolutely ridiculous noise escapes me, and I clutch the note to my chest, almost crying tears of joy. It was all real. 

I settle back into my bed and re-read the note ten times.

A ridiculously loud banging noise jolts me out of my reverie, and I jump up. 

‘Miss Kensington! Are you in there?’ a familiar voice yells through the door.

‘Just a minute!’ I yell back. What time is it? I pick up my phone and my stomach drops. 15:47. I’ve been asleep for hours on end! Not only that, I have about ten missed calls, and twenty emails from Intelligence and Strategy. What’s going on? I scramble through one of my packed boxes for clothes, and open the door to see lanky Gilligan from administration. 

‘Uh…’ he looks me up and down. I must be an absolute mess. I cringe silently. ‘There’s been some sort of emergency. You’re supposed to be in Meeting Room B. They sent me to get you…’ 

‘What sort of emergency!?’ I exclaim. 

‘I really don’t know, they won’t tell me,’ he says, shrugging. 

‘Okay. I have to shower but I’ll be right there, okay?’

‘I have to bring you back…’

‘Well you’re going to have to wait, then,’ I shut the door in his face. What the hell is going on? Why did I sleep so late? It’s my own fault. I think Brooke and I both needed the second and third time, but the fourth and fifth probably weren’t necessary… I grin to myself as I am flooded with memories of last night. 

After I’ve showered and got myself looking presentable, I open the door to see Gilligan leaning up against the wall across from my room. 

‘Finally,’ he remarks, and I glare at him. He seems to be forgetting that I outrank him. 

When I finally walk into the large, spacious Meeting Room B, forty pairs of eyes glare at me. 

‘Agent Kensington. So nice of you to show up,’ says Beaumont, who is, for some reason, standing at the front of the room as if he is heading up this meeting. Where the hell is Brooke? I say nothing and slide into a seat. ‘Now that we’re all here,’ he pauses briefly to nod at me ‘I will get you up to speed. As you all know, the military believe all bio-terrorists have now been captured-’ everyone around me murmurs in contempt, a few laugh ‘-which we know is, for want of a better word, bullshit. Today, they attempted to transport the first few bio-terrorists from the custody of Curdun Cay in Mt. Baker, to their own detention facility on the outskirts of Seattle. Needless to say, it didn’t go well. Three bio-terrorists escaped,’ he presses a clicker and three pictures show up on the screen behind him ‘Henry Daughtry, who possesses smoke abilities, Eugene Sims, who possesses video abilities, and perhaps the most unstable and dangerous of the three, Abigail Walker, street name ‘Fetch’.. Director Augustine was, thankfully, already at Curdun Cay at the time of the crash, and managed to make it to the scene and apprehend Daughtry at a place called Salmon Bay, so we only have Sims and Walker to worry about. Both have made their way into Seattle and are wreaking havoc already. We have declared martial law, and the destruction of bridges and roads into the city, and building of D.U.P. bases in several districts throughout central Seattle has already begun. Director Augustine has requested that a number of you relocate to Seattle in order to help with the capture of these bio-terrorists. A jet is waiting for you outside, when I call your name, please head to Exit 12 and board it immediately. Does everybody understand?’ he glances around, and everyone nods. ‘Alright, Agent Ayler,’ I watch as one of the younger women in the room hops up, looking pleased with herself. 

Is my name going to be called?

‘Agent Ansted,’

He’s going in alphabetical order…

‘Agent Cray… Agent Finn… Agent Farn… Agent Hadley… Agent Haynes… Agent Kaliki…’ he looks at me, and I swear I see contempt ‘…Agent Kensington’ I jump up, perhaps a little too fast, and then make a concerted effort not to look excited. ‘…Agent Norsted…’ his voice fades away as I make my way out of the room and down to Exit 12. 

She wants me with her. She hasn’t forgotten. 

The flight takes all of four hours, which still isn’t fast enough for me. When we finally touch down at Curdun Cay, I am itching to get out of my seat. I peer out of the window.

What a sight Curdun Cay is. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s a behemoth structure, nestled in the side of a mountain, and when I think of all the powerful, powerful conduits it holds, a little shiver goes down my spine.

There, at the very top, sure enough, is what looks like an observation deck. I bet that’s where she sleeps. 

We go through what feels like an hour of security checks and huge metal doors, which I smirk at. Metal, metal, metal, everything metal. Stronger than everyone but me. I want to just walk straight through it all, but I’ll respect their little procedures. 

Finally, we are escorted to the floor third from the top, with a breathtaking view of the snowy mountains surrounding us. The corridor runs the length of the outside, accommodating the view, and the rooms are on the inside. We walk inside ‘Conference Room 3’, and there stands a balding, beady eyed man, who I recognize as the D.U.P’s Deputy Director, Samuel Fishbein. I met him once or twice at various functions. Once we are all seated, he clears his throat.

‘I trust Beaumont brought you all up to speed on the situation we are dealing with. He has now relocated to Blaine, on the US-Canada border, and will deal with any issues that may arise should the escapees attempt to cross it. Augustine has been interrogating residents of Salmon Bay for information, and is on her way back here now. She will join us tomorrow morning for an Intelligence, Strategy and Defense meeting at 8am sharp. Right now, you will all be escorted to your quarters, except for you, Hadley, and you, Ayler. You two will remain here with me to discuss construction. The rest of you, please make your way out. Thank you.’ 

Everybody stands up and shuffles out of the room. 

‘Honestly, all the way up here just for this,’ I hear one agent mutter to another, as I follow them out of the door. 

‘Yeah, and you wouldn’t believe what Augustine did to those people in Salmon Bay,’

‘What’d she do?’

‘Screwed them all up real bad with concrete shards, cause they wouldn’t talk. Or they had nothing to say. Either way, I wouldn’t wanna get on her bad side, you know what I mean, cause-’ he makes a cutting sound and gestures across his neck, ‘-she has no problem torturing people.’ 

‘Agent Kensington,’ says a voice, and I turn to see a guard in full uniform, except for his helmet. I am one hundred percent certain that I recognize him, but for the life of me I can’t think where from. ‘Please come with me,’ 

‘Okay,’ I nod, and I begin to follow him in the opposite direction everyone else is walking on. Something is niggling at me. Did Brooke really hurt innocent people today? I think about a moment towards the end of last night, when we’d both exhausted all of our desire. She was running her fingertips up and down my arm, so, so softly it almost tickled, but not quite. It gave me shivers. With that in mind… I can’t picture her torturing innocent people. I’ll ask her about it, anyway, I’m sure it’s not true. The guard I’m sure I recognize enters the elevator with me, and hits a button. We stand side by side, and I stare at his profile. ‘Excuse me, but have we met?’ I ask, curious.

‘No, we haven’t met,’ he replies, but there’s a tinge of something on his face. 

‘Seriously? I’m sure I’ve seen you before…’

‘Yes, you have seen me before,’ he says, his voice expressionless. 

‘Then how could we not have-’ I stop dead in my tracks as the memory of where I know this man from hits me. He was one of the guards outside Brooke’s room, the night I broke in. I knocked him out. ‘Oh!’ I clasp my hands to my mouth.

‘I wondered if you would realize or not,’ he smiles, turning to me. ‘I’m Agent Rockwell. I’m one of Director Augustine’s two personal guards.’

‘I… see…’ I am winded. This guy knows. He knows. He knows about Brooke and I. He would have seen what I did. I feel my cheeks flush. 

‘Don’t worry, I’m being paid a lot of money not to say anything. A lot…’ he grins ‘I’ve almost paid off my family’s debts… so I’m grateful to you. Really, I am. If you hadn’t pulled that stunt on Augustine back in Washington, I’d still be scraping by on the payroll trying to make ends meet, so I owe you.’ 

‘Uh… thank you…’ I trail. I haven’t met anyone so friendly in months and months. I feel as though I could cry. I want to hug him, this Rockwell. 

‘So anyway… you will be staying with Augustine, in her quarters. There are separate quarters assigned for you, and administration will show that that’s where you are staying. But, if you want, you can be here, as much as you like. Just, you have to be discreet. Today is fine, but other days you will need to go to your other quarters and wait until all areas are clear before coming up here.’

‘…and Brooke, uh, Augustine, arranged all this?’ I ask.

‘Yeah, I got instructions an hour ago,’ he says, as the elevator comes to a stop. ‘Anyway, this is it. I’ll leave you to settle in.’ he winks at me, and the doors slide open to reveal the most beautiful penthouse I have ever seen, with 360 degree mountain views. I gasp at the beauty of it as I step our of the elevator ‘seeya!’ says Rockwell, and the doors shut behind me. 

I spend the next twenty minutes acquainting myself with this beautiful place, its black marble benches, black leather couches, the wrought iron spiral staircase that leads up to a balustraded platform on which a large bed with black sheets stands. Everything is black, and looks so amazing in stark contrast to the endless white of the view surrounding it via the floor to ceiling windows. 

If ever I have seen selfish spending of government money, and I have seen a lot, this it. But damn, it’s beautiful. I sit down on the floor and proceed to watch the most beautiful sunset I have ever seen.

I make myself some dinner in the kitchen, rifle through drawers without finding much of interest, although I do locate her perfume in the bathroom and spend a good while sniffing at the bottle like some deranged stalker, replaying memories of last night in my mind. 

I settle on a couch facing wall-window hybrid, and read through all of my missed memorandums and emails, get myself acquainted with the escaped conduits – bio-terrorists – conduits (which?) and their abilities via their files. Then, bored, I make my perfect little sphere, and then I make two, and hover them above my palms, spinning. I love the weight of them, which I feel and don’t feel simultaneously. I love the control. I love that I have learned to control my power so perfectly. I love my power. I love that Brooke helped me to control my power like this. I love Brooke. I love Brooke… 

‘Very impressive,’ says a voice from behind me, and I almost drop my spheres, but instead retract them just in time. I turn to see her, fully clad in her navy winter gear. 

‘You’re here!’ I squeak, embarrassingly, and I jump up and into her arms. Her clothes are slightly damp and she is very cold. I kiss her cool lips, and I swear our breath makes steam between us. ‘You’re freezing…’ I murmur, kissing her again. 

‘It gets very cold after dark here, don’t forget that,’ she says, looking into my eyes, ‘makes it harder for escapees. But it also means ten minutes out there without a source of heat or proper clothing can kill you.’ 

‘Right,’ I say ‘This place is beautiful, by the way…’

‘I’m glad you like it,’ she smiles, and she kisses me again. ‘I’m going to take a shower… I’d like you to join me…’ 

 

CHAPTER 15

 

We lay together on the couch, our hair still wet from our little shower escapade. Brooke reads through memos on her phone, and I lay with my head on her chest, absently watching the TV news station replay the story about the escapees over and over. 

‘I’ll go get them, you know…’

‘Hm?’ she asks, stroking my back.

‘The escapees. Send me to Seattle. I’ll get them.’

‘I don’t think so,’ she says softly.

‘Why not!?’ I push myself up so I can look at her.

‘Have you forgotten who you are?’ she asks, quirking an eyebrow.

‘No, of course I-’

‘What do you think is going to happen if you go rampaging through Seattle with your metal, running after them? Do you think people are going to welcome you with open arms? No. They’ll be terrified. And furious. They barely accept that the D.U.P uses concrete, let alone metal. There’ll be an uproar. Not to mention the fact that the D.U.P is under strict government instruction not to disclose to the public that you possess an ability.’

‘So I’ll wear a mask! No one will know it’s me!’

‘Oh, Clair…’ she laughs.

‘Don’t laugh at me! You know I could bring them both back here in hours!’

‘Beautiful girl…’ she smiles, stroking my cheek ‘I know you could. So could I. But you don’t understand…’ 

‘Understand what!?’ I push her hand from my cheek. ‘Will you please stop patronizing me?’ I say, staring into her eyes. She sighs, and averts her gaze for a few seconds. 

‘Okay…’ she sits up, and I slide off of her. She reaches for the remote and switches the TV off. ‘The government were closing down the D.U.P.’ she sighs.

‘Closing down!?’ I ask. I thought they were just transferring prisoners. Cutting costs.

‘Yes. They think the military can handle the bio-terrorists by themselves. Your father signed off on it a month ago…’ 

‘So… today’s events prove that they obviously can’t handle it, and they’re just gonna have to keep us going!’ 

‘That’s my point, Clair. We need this. We need those bio-terrorists to run free and cause havoc so that people see the need for the D.U.P… or we’re done. We’re all done. And I don’t know what will happen to us. If they’re locking up all bio-terrorists… where do you think we’re going to end up? No. We have to keep the D.U.P going, no matter what it takes.’

‘So you’re saying…’

‘I’m saying we need to not catch the escapees, at least for while. We need them to make people scared.’

‘Right… so…’ I hesitate. I know what she’s telling me, and I don’t like it. ‘Did you… make this happen?’ I ask her. She looks at me for a little while before she answers.

‘Yes. I had to.’ 

‘Okay…’ I trail. Well, that I can handle. I suppose. I don’t know. But there’s something else… ‘Okay. I understand.’ 

‘I knew you would=’

‘But there’s something else,’ I cut her off ‘something that I overheard today,’ 

‘What?’

‘After Fishbein briefed us, I overheard two agents talking. They said you spent today torturing innocent people. Is it true?’ I reach out and take both her hands in mine. ‘Tell me it isn’t…’ 

‘Clair…’ she says softly, and for the first time since we fought each other in training, I can see real fear in her eyes again.

‘Please, Brooke…’ I trail. I am pleading. Pleading for it not to be true that I am in love with someone who would do that. I don’t know how to feel. 

‘I did what I had to,’ she says bluntly, averting her eyes. 

‘You had to!?’ I exclaim, dropping her hands. ‘You had to pierce the skin and flesh and blood, real skin and flesh and blood of real people? You had to? For what?’ 

‘We can’t be seen to be lenient against bio-terrorism! They suspect us as it is!’

‘But you weren’t fighting bio-terrorists. They were normals. Why did you torture them!?’ 

‘You don’t understand!’ she replies angrily. ‘You don’t understand because you’re weak!’

‘Weak!? I think hurting innocent people is weak. I think choosing not to hurt innocent people is strong!’ 

‘No. No. Sometimes, the best choice isn’t the easy one. Sometimes, the best choice is one that will hurt other people… for the greater good.’

‘NO! The best choice is one that hurts no one!’

‘You’re weak.’ Her gaze bores into me, and I can’t understand how this is the same woman who kissed me so tenderly, who touched me so softly not half an hour ago.

‘I don’t know who you are,’ I reply ‘I don’t know what you are.’ 

‘There was something going on, Clair. They all knew something. Daughtry spent far too long inside that burning building with those civilians, and I don’t know what happened or what was disclosed but it scares me, it scares me that something is going on. I don’t trust Daughtry, not even for a second, but he really did seem to be the best choice for this operation. Now I regret that choice. I am so sure that something happened in that building, Clair. I just don’t know what.’

‘It still doesn’t excuse what you did. How can you live with yourself?’

‘I did what I had to.’

‘No! You inflicted physical pain on people who didn’t deserve it! That is inexcusable!’

‘You don’t understand,’

‘You keep saying that, but I do! I do understand! You’re scared, you don’t want to end up in a prison, or worse. But it doesn’t mean you should torture people!’

‘Clair, I am going to tell you this once, and once only,’ she looks fierce, angry, formidable. ‘In order to win in life, you must be merciless. You must be fearless. And you must learn to put yourself first, no matter what. Because no one else will.’

‘But-’

‘No. Listen. You and I are on the winning side of this. We are afflicted with these abilities that, seven years ago, would have had us strung up and killed. I have changed that. I have made it so that conduits can be safe, here at Curdun Cay, some even put into positions of authority within the D.U.P. Do you think our detainees are tortured, treated badly? No. We teach them to control their abilities; give them psychological help, therapy, to help them overcome their demons. I had to do that alone, nobody helped me. When all this began, I made a very difficult decision regarding a little girl who I considered my own child, but it was for the greater good. Now, conduits aren’t murdered in the streets by terrified normals. They call us instead.’

‘I know, but-’

‘Listen to me. Yes, I tortured those people today. But they all knew something, and they weren’t letting on. One of the civilians who we apprehended claimed that he ‘caught’ an ability from Daughtry. Tomlin has researched this, it’s not possible. So he was lying, and I don’t know why. So I had to be merciless. One slip up, one oversight, and some plot, some plan, could overthrow the whole D.U.P. Don’t think people haven’t tried before. So yes, I tortured those people, but I had to. You have to understand that mercy will get you absolutely nowhere.’ 

‘But-’

‘Remember how you almost beat me? And I was at your mercy. And what did you do? You took pity. Showed mercy. And then, you lost. It’s all fine in a training arena, because it’s just training. But in real life, in a real fight, out there in the real world, which I sometimes wonder how much you understand, you would have been killed.’ 

‘Don’t fucking patronize me, Brooke. I do understand the real world. I’m just not a bad person, like you.’ I stand up. ‘I’m leaving.’ 

‘No!’ she stands up too, and grabs my wrists. ‘I need you to understand!’

‘I understand perfectly!’

‘You don’t!’ she exclaims, angry. Then, her face softens. ‘Please…’ she trails, ‘it’s all for the greater good…’

‘I can’t agree with what you did today, Brooke. I’m sorry. I just can’t.’ I shake her hands off my wrists and back away.

‘No…’ she strides towards me and grabs me by the waist. ‘Please stay…’ she says, pulling me close, ‘stay,’ she kisses my cheek, ‘stay,’ she kisses my neck, ‘please…’ just a whisper now, and I’m torn, ripped, shredded, in pieces. How can I push this woman away? I love her. I love her so much. But I don’t agree with what she’s done. I don’t agree with her all the time. She’s holding me tight. I sigh, and wrap my arms around her. I do love her. I do. We kiss sweetly. 

‘Come to bed…’ she whispers, and I nod. Damn her. Why does she have to be so persuasive, so soft? Why can’t she just yell at me and push me away? She takes my hand and leads me up the iron stairs to bed.

Gently, she pushes me down to the bed, crawling over me. She holds herself up above me, and strokes my cheek, looking down at me with such tenderness, such a beautiful look in her eyes, I melt. She kisses me then, the lightest, sweetest kiss, and I wrap my arms around her, wanting to feel the weight of her on me. We’re not going to agree on everything, I guess… ‘I’m so happy,’ she murmurs, planting kisses on my cheeks ‘I’m so happy you’re mine,’ 

My heart beats fast, and I break into a huge smile. Euphoria, joy. I want to tell her that I love her but I’m scared that it’s too soon. I’ve been thinking it all day…

Instead, I say ‘me too…’ and hold on to her tight, kissing her neck. 

I’m happy, I am, I’m ecstatic… but somewhere in the back of my mind…

I feel like I’ve been manipulated. 

 

CHAPTER 16

 

A few days pass without so much as a whisper from Brooke, who is in Seattle setting up new headquarters, amongst other things. I’ve been receiving updates as each district is overtaken by us, and it’s a little crazy. I have been sitting through arduous meeting after meeting, debating what to do next, how best to capture the bio-terrorist escapees, all the while knowing this is all pointless because we’re not going to capture them anyway. At least, not for a while. 

‘I wouldn’t get your hopes up,’ says Rockwell, when he escorts me up to the penthouse for the third night running. ‘Apparently it’s all systems go in Seattle,’

‘Well, either way, I like it better up here,’ I reply, inwardly annoyed that he seems to know more than me about whether or not Brooke will be coming home. 

‘I don’t blame you,’ he winks at me ‘seeya tomorrow,’ 

The doors close and I am alone again. I flop down on to the couch and take out my phone. Absently, I open my photo album, and start to flick through my photos. There are none of Brooke in here, god forbid. How I wish I could snap photos of her, when she’s thinking and seems far away, or that loving look she gives me, or the fear in her eyes I rarely see. 

I get to one of my family, sat around the table at one of the last family dinners I attended. I look unimpressed. Strangely, I feel a pang of yearning for one of those family dinners, listening to Benjamin drivel on, watching my father watching my mother watch my brother, whilst no one looked at me, the way I liked it. The dinners were annoying, but they were… constant. My family were constant. Now the only constant in my life is Brooke, and she’s not even that constant. Do I… miss my family? I don’t know. Maybe I should see them. 

I send a text message to Fatima, my father’s executive assistant, saying that I’d like to see him, then I switch the TV on to watch the news about what’s going on in Seattle. Eventually, I doze off. 

I wake up as the sun rises, with a crick in my neck. No sign of Brooke. I sigh, annoyed, deflated. Of course she didn’t come back. I check my phone and see that there is a message from Fatima saying that my father is actually in Seattle and has a free slot at 4, and that I can meet him at the newly constructed D.U.P headquarters there. 

Later, I arrive in Seattle via air. As we’re descending, I see all the wrecked bridges leading out of the city. It’s so real, looking at it like this. Scary. I can’t help but marvel at the behemoth structure that Brooke has created around the Seattle News Tower, as we touch down on a concrete helipad ledge. My skin prickles at the concept of possibly seeing her. It’s been days, and she hasn’t so much as sent a message, and I sure as hell am not going to message her, I’m too stubborn, and I don’t want to seem clingy and weak.

I am guided inside the building, where Fatima greets me.

‘Clair!’ she shakes my hand warmly. ‘It’s been such a long time. My, you look so much older now than when I last saw you!’

‘Uh, thanks, I guess,’ I say, quirking an eyebrow. I see my father’s bodyguards flanking a door across from us, he must be in there.

‘Oh no, in a good way! You’ve lost all your, what do they call it? Puppy fat! You don’t look like a kid anymore,’ she grins ‘anyway, your father’s just in a meeting with Ms. Augustine, but he’ll be out any minute. I set you up in room 127, down the hall, there’ll be refreshments if you want them,’

‘Thank you, Fatima,’ I smile at her, my heart beating a little faster at the mention of Brooke. 

‘No problems. I’ll just be down the hall in one of the offices,’ she gestures to her left ‘working on some things, if you need me.’ 

‘Thank you,’ I say again, and she nods and walks off. She’s always been kind to me, ever since she started with my Dad. 

I pace the hall for a few minutes, and then Brooke exits the doorway flanked by the bodyguards. She starts a little at the sight of me, and I refuse to smile at her. If she can’t even send a message, she can’t have a smile. 

‘Hello, Miss. Kensington,’ she says, as my father follows. 

‘Hi. Hi, Dad,’ I smile at him, but his face is blank.

‘Oh, you’re here,’ he says, seeming surprised.

‘Didn’t Fatima tell you I was coming?’ I ask. Why isn’t he happier to see me?

‘Uh, yeah. She did. Hi,’ he walks over and hugs me, but so gingerly. Why so gingerly? I catch Brooke’s eye for a moment, but she looks away. She looks… thrown. I don’t know. 

‘So, Fatima said she set us up in room 127, shall we go?’ 

‘Yes, let’s go. Ms. Augustine,’ he nods at Brooke, and reaches out to shake her hand. She reaches back what I think is slightly late, but not so noticeably. 

‘Thank you for meeting with me today, President Kensington,’ she smiles at him coldly, then turns to me. Her gaze bores into me, and though her face doesn’t move, her eyes are set alight. ‘No doubt I’ll be seeing you soon, Miss. Kensington,’

‘I’m sure,’ I reply curtly. She nods and walks away, and we walk in the opposite direction, followed by the bodyguards. 

‘How’ve you been, Dad?’ I ask.

‘Oh, you know,’ he says flatly. ‘Busy… always busy.’ 

‘How’s mom?’

‘She’s good. Lots of interviews, lots of magazines, lots of clothes. Lots of charity functions. The usual.’

‘And Benjamin?’ we walk into room 127, and there is a lovely spread of pastries and cakes. I haven’t seen food like this in months… during training, food was all maximum health benefit, minimum taste.

‘Oh, just great, wonderful. Did you hear he scored the goal that won the championship for Sidwell?’ 

‘No, but that’s great,’ I say, bored already.

‘Yes, it’s fantastic. I’m so proud,’ he says, and we sit down across from each other. He won’t look at me for some reason. Isn’t he proud of me?

‘Did they tell you I graduated from D.U.P training with higher grades and scores than any other agent before me?’ I ask him, smiling.

‘Oh, yeah they did. Well done,’ he says, but his heart’s not in it. He still won’t look at me. 

‘Listen,’ I lean over the table, and reach for an almond croissant. ‘I heard that there were plans to close down the D.U.P.’ I take a huge bite out of the flaky, sweet thing, and the sugar instantly makes my head spin. He looks at me then.

‘And how exactly did you hear that?’ he asks, his tone cold. 

‘In case you didn’t know, I’m part of the D.U.P’s core Intelligence and Strategy team, so of course I heard that, we all did,’ I lie easily, I’m surprised how well it flows.

‘Yes, well, there were. There are.’

‘Are?’ I ask, horrified.

‘Look, Clair, I don’t think you’d really be able to understand, what with your, uh, condition…’

‘My condition?’ 

‘The D.U.P was never meant to get so out of hand. You know the previous president, well, he didn’t make many decisions himself, put it that way. Easily, uh… easily pushed into things. And Ms. Augustine is a very pushy woman,’ 

‘If by pushy you mean driven and powerful, then yes, she is.’

‘I was afraid of this…’ 

‘Afraid of what!?’ I spit.

‘She’s got you in her… bio-terrorist… clutches. She’s got you believing in this soft stance. But just look where it’s gotten us. Look at the state of Seattle. If we still did things the right way…’

‘The right way!? Dad, if we still did things that way, I would be dead by now,’ I say, staring him right in the eye. 

‘Of course you wouldn’t, you’re… my daughter.’

‘Oh yes, so I live, and what, all the other people with abilities are killed in cold blood?’ 

‘I’m not saying that… Clair, listen to me. The D.U.P has done a great job of locking all these bio-terrorists up. There are barely any left on the streets. But it’s time we take control from Ms. Augustine and her bio-terrorist pet project, and hand it over to the military, to the government. Where it belongs.’ 

‘So say you do this. What happens to Br- to Ms. Augustine? What happens to me? What happens to all the D.U.P agents with abilities?’

‘I don’t have to discuss any of this with you, you know,’ he sips at his coffee calmly, averting his eyes.

‘Oh yeah, if the question is tough, don’t answer it, typical politician,’ I say.

‘Do not speak to me like that, Clair. You could be locked in a cell or worse right now, but I took it upon myself to ensure that you would have a place in the D.U.P. Luckily, Ms. Augustine didn’t take much persuading to take you in, which furthers my belief that she is a sympathizer, rather than the protector she should be.’

‘And why shouldn’t we sympathize? It’s not our fault we have abilities! We didn’t ask for them!’ I yell, banging my fist on the table. I feel the bodyguards’ presence, and one of their hands finds my shoulder within seconds. Just, lightly. ‘Will you tell Dumb and Dumber over here to lay off?’

‘At ease,’ he nods at them. 

‘Not that it matters. I could crush them in seconds. You have no idea,’ as soon as I say it, I know I shouldn’t have. My father’s face goes stone cold.

‘And you wonder,’ he says, standing up ‘why people are so afraid of you bio-terrorists.’

‘Dad, no, I-’

‘It saddens me to see what my little girl has become,’ he shakes his head. 

‘I didn’t-’

‘I’m going to ask that you refrain from contacting your mother and brother. I think it’s best that way,’

‘No…’ I begin to tear up.

‘Clearly, Ms. Augustine has brainwashed you. The D.U.P will be allowed to clean up this mess in Seattle, after which point the transfer of power will begin.’ He is cold, powerful. I realize now why Brooke looked so thrown. He must have just told her. She’ll be furious that her plan hasn’t worked. I am still reeling from being told not to contact my own family. ‘I have a flight to catch,’ he says, and he begins to walk. When he gets to the doorway, I am overflowing with rage.

‘Fine! Disown me! I won’t speak to any of you! I don’t care about you anyway, and I never did! None of you understand me, none of you ever cared about me!’

‘Please calm yourself, Clair. No one is disowning anyone,’ he says. ‘Your continued silence with regards to your unfortunate ability will be appreciated.’

With that, he’s gone. And I can’t believe it. My own father. I’ve never seen him like that before, he’s never spoken to me that way. It’s like he doesn’t see me as his daughter anymore. 

It’s like he just sees a bio-terrorist. 

Is that all I am now?

 

CHAPTER 17

 

I am reeling. I spend an hour pacing the halls, unable to contain my anger. I avoid everyone I catch sight of, I can’t even fathom the idea of speaking to anyone right now.

I just need to be alone. I find my way up on to the roof, and that’s when I let the tears come. My own father, and he sees me as this disgusting monster. I’m so torn. We hunt these people down, we alienate them, make the public fear them. Not all of them are good, but not all of them are bad, either… but no, it’s for the greater good. Better that they’re locked up safely than murdered in cold blood. Better that way…

I don’t know what’s going to happen to me, when they shut down the D.U.P. I don’t know what will happen to Brooke, either. Will they lock us up too? Probably. Condemned to life in a cell. 

I watch the sunset, pink and orange. It calms me, and my breathing returns to normal. It’s freezing cold up here, but I don’t care. I want to play with my metal but I don’t think it’s a good idea in such plain view. 

I sink into a trance like state as the sky darkens, and it’s my phone buzzing that jolts me back into awareness.

It’s from Brooke. 

Are you still around? Stay with me tonight. 

I smile, and I am flooded with warmth. I’m supposed to be mad at her, though. I tap out a response.

Where are you? 

She replies instantly.

Underground. Take the elevator down to the car park, I’ll have Grantham meet you.

I remember Rockwell mentioning Grantham that first time on the way up to the penthouse. He must be in on the whole thing too. I sigh, and watch as all the neon lights in the city start to flicker on. I decide to make her wait. 

Ten minutes pass, and another message comes.

Are you coming?

Good. She cares. I type as I stand up.

Yes. 

Grantham is stony faced, stoic and silent, unlike Rockwell. I see why Brooke picked him to accompany her here, Rockwell is probably far too chatty for her liking. 

He nods at one of many doorways around the car park, and we enter. We go down four flights of stairs, through a locked door, down a hallway, to a door that Grantham nods at.

‘Here,’ he grunts, and I open the door and walk in. I close it behind me, and find myself in a strangely lit bunker. Blue strip lights line the floors and ceilings, in place of proper lighting, and it gives the whole place a strange, otherworldly feel. It spans a few rooms, and I wander through a sort of lounge area to a bedroom-office hybrid. 

The second I see her, sitting there, all my resolve crumbles, and I find myself in her arms. My anger over her not contacting me or coming home seems tiny and irrelevant compared to the anger I feel towards my father.

I squeeze her tight, fighting tears. I’m scared, though. I’m scared for us both, because I don’t know what’s going to happen.

‘Clair…’ she kisses my cheek, and pulls back to look at me, tucking my hair behind my ears. ‘What happened in there?’ 

‘It’s like he doesn’t even see a human being in front of him anymore, let alone his own daughter… he was so… cold…’ I bury my face in her shoulder, and she strokes my back. ‘He says he’s closing us down…’ I mumble.

‘Look at me,’ she demands, and I obey, even though I don’t want her to see that my eyes are wet. ‘I am going to make sure the D.U.P stays in power. I don’t care what it takes.’

‘How? He’s hell bent. You should have heard the things he said…’

‘I have an idea,’ she says dryly. ‘But pay it no mind. We are going to win.’

‘He told me not to speak to my own family anymore…’ 

‘Oh, Clair…’ she kisses me then, instead of saying anything else. I don’t think she knows what to say, and I kiss her back, holding on to her even tighter. I feel as though she’s all I have now, and I feel terrified that I am going to lose her. I have to get a grip on myself, before she sees me as weak, before she walks away. I kiss her harder and run my hands down her back to her butt. ‘I’ve missed you,’ she murmurs. 

‘Then why the hell didn’t I hear from you for three days!?’ I exclaim, pushing at her, my anger suddenly re-ignited. 

‘I could ask you the same thing!’ 

‘Well I don’t know, who you’re with, I mean, I wouldn’t want them to see a message come up, and, you know, I-’

‘When we’re apart,’ she says, and I look at the floor. She takes my hands in hers. ‘When we’re apart, I want you to call me, every night, at 11. Agreed?’

‘Agreed.’ 

‘And to hell with your father. We’ll make him see just how much America needs the D.U.P.’ she smiles, like she’s already got plans. ‘Now…’ she moves closer, and whispers in my ear. ‘I want you to take off your clothes…’ 

She stands back and looks at me expectantly. 

‘Oh, you do, do you?’ I ask, giving her a mischievous smile. ‘What if I want to take yours off instead?’ I reach out for her sweater, and she grabs my wrist to stop me. 

‘You’ll do as I say,’ she says, a glint in her eyes, and my heart beats a little faster. ‘Take off your sweater,’ she lets my wrist go. I stare into her eyes for a little while, and she stares back. I flash a small smile and pull my sweater over my head. ‘Now your top,’ she directs, and I obey. ‘I like this…’ she runs a finger under one of the straps of my navy blue lace bra, then backs away. ‘Shoes,’ she says, and I slip my shoes off. Then, she comes close to me, and runs her hands down my arms, pulling my hands to the button on my jeans. I pop it and she backs away again to watch as I take them off. I stand before her in my underwear, watching her watching me. I love the look on her face. ‘You’re beautiful,’ she sighs, and I blush as she swoops over to me, sliding her hands around my waist. I stare into her eyes, becoming familiar now, the deep green with the occasional fleck of cold, cold blue. I run my fingertips along her neat jawline, and kiss her soft lips. 

‘So are you,’ I utter, as I pull back to look into her eyes again. She smiles softly and kisses me back. 

‘Come,’ she says, pulling me over to the bed. ‘Lie down,’ she directs, and I obey. I prop myself up on my elbows, looking up at her. I watch as she pulls her sweater over her head, and I stare, enticed, almost hypnotized, as her muscles contract beneath her pale skin and she throws the sweater to one side. She crawls over me, hair mussed, and I want to kiss every inch of her beautiful, lithe body. 

‘I love your body,’ I say, running my hands over her arms. She smiles down at me softly.

‘I’m going to make you come so hard you’ll see stars,’ she says, her voice dripping with arousal, and then her teeth are in my neck and she’s pushing my hands up above my head and grinding against me, and I’m exploding with desire. We kiss frantically as her hands find the catch on my bra, and then her own, and then we’re skin on skin and I’m shuddering already when she slows things down, kissing me gently, sweetly as she reaches down and touches me oh so lightly, making me cry out with lust. 

‘Oh my god,’ I whimper into her mouth, and feel her smile. She takes her hand away and I groan, but then she’s working both my nipples as she kisses me and I’m burning up for her, my breath escaping me in short bursts, I want her so, so much, so much it almost hurts. ‘I want you,’ I breathe, pushing my hands into her hair and kissing her harder. 

‘Tell me what you want,’ she murmurs, pulling back to look into my eyes as she runs her nails down my body softly, and the sensation makes me shiver. 

‘I want you. I’m yours. Do what you want with me…’ I reply, sliding my hands back above my head, and I watch her eyes light up. She loves control, and I love being controlled by her. She strokes my cheek and looks at me lovingly, and I smile up at her. Then, concrete binds my wrists, and her lips are on my neck, my collar bone, my nipple, my stomach, my hip bone. Her hands follow her down, nails dragging lightly along my skin, making me shiver some more. 

‘I love that,’ she remarks, dragging her nails across my skin again and delighting in my shudder ‘That little noise you make…’ I wasn’t aware that I was making any noise, but maybe I am, I don’t know, either way she’s got my panties between her teeth and she’s pulling them off, never breaking eye contact. I can’t even think straight right now, and then she’s got them off, and she’s pushing my leg up, planting kisses, then she reaches my inner thigh and sinks her teeth into the soft flesh, and I cry out, hot and heavy. ‘Mmmm…’ she murmurs, clearly delighting in my pain and pleasure. Then, she licks me, just once, and I shake with anticipation.

‘Yes…’ I urge her on, but she doesn’t oblige. She slides her body up over mine and places a single kiss on my lips. ‘Brooke…’ I look at her pleadingly. I want it bad. ‘I’m so… so wet… for you,’ I tell her. She smiles, then she kisses and licks her way down my body again, and I inhale deeply, closing my eyes, preparing myself. 

‘Look at me,’ she orders, and I look up at her, framed by my knees. She runs a hand along my inner thigh, and the look on her face is so sexy, I want her so much I could cry with frustration. She touches me then, keeping eye contact, and I moan with gratification as she does what she does so well. Then, she’s licking me too, and the simultaneous pleasures are almost too much to handle, and I moan hard, pushing my head back into the pillow, wishing I had something to bite into. 

‘Fuck,’ I exhale, as she pleasures me expertly, running her fingers up and down my thigh with her free hand. I could so easily profess my love to her right now, just let the words tumble out of my mouth between sharp breaths, but I’m scared and I don’t, and I am wordless and unable to breathe properly as she works me into climax, and I shake uncontrollably and squirm, my senses overloaded, and she holds me down and continues, and I cry out uncontrollably as I come, straining against my shackle, against her. She litters my body with kisses as I’m seeing sparks and panting, and she retracts the concrete so I can reach down and pull at her, I just want her body against mine. I hold on to her tight, still shaking, and she strokes my hair. 

‘I did warn you…’ she smiles, and I squeeze her tighter. She pushes herself up and grabs her phone from the bedside table, taps the screen a few times, and all the lights go out. ‘Let’s get some sleep…’ she kisses my cheek and I cuddle up to her, tracing patterns on her skin. We stay like this for a while, and I listen to her breathing slow down as she falls asleep.

‘Brooke..?’ I say through the darkness. 

‘Mm?’ she responds sleepily. I say nothing, and cringe into her shoulder. ‘What?’ 

‘Nothing… I just… I’m just… you make me happy. And I’m… glad. That I have you. I’m glad that you’re mine,’ I say, inwardly chiding myself for being so incoherent.

‘As am I… more than you know,’ she replies, kissing the top of my head. I smile, and hold on to her tighter. ‘Sleep well, beautiful girl,’ 

 

CHAPTER 18

 

‘What do you MEAN, took out a mobile command centre… with SMOKE? No, Daughtry is back at Curdun Cay, I can assure you!’ I am awoken by the shrill tones of Brooke sounding angrier than I think I’ve ever heard. I prop myself up to see her pacing the room furiously, her phone pressed to her ear. ‘Well, what I want to know, Fishbein, is how on earth he got into Seattle, when you were SUPPOSED to have completely destroyed all bridges… Oh yes, and I suppose he just flew in, did he? I’d like you to explain to me, why it is SO impossible for you to follow simple instructions. I told you arrange for the immediate destruction of ALL roads and bridges in and out of Seattle… I don’t care if no cars could get in or out, we’re not dealing with CARS, we’re dealing with BIO-TERRORISTS!’ she glances over and notices that I’m awake. I look at her quizzically. ‘Anyway, details of your gross incompetence aside, I want answers, and I want them now. Step up the defenses in every district, bring more soldiers in, increase patrols. I want you to find him, and bring him to me. I will speak to Tomlin about how this possibly could have happened. Call me immediately if anything new comes to light,’ she exhales sharply and throws her phone at the bed.

‘What’s going on?’ I ask, still groggy.

‘That man, Delsin Rowe, who claimed he caught an ability from Daughtry in Salmon Bay… it turns out, he wasn’t lying. He’s found his way here and he’s taking out soldiers like he’s swatting flies! I am not happy with Tomlin. He said our ability transfer method was the only way…’

‘Let me go catch this Delsin kid,’ I say softly.

‘Clair, I am really not in the mood to go through this again.’

‘But-’

‘You need to be back at Curdun Cay with the rest of your team before people start asking questions,’

‘Fine…’ I sigh, dragging myself out of bed. There’s no point arguing with her right now. I pull my clothes on as she taps furiously at her phone, typing at the speed of light.

‘So…’ I say, wrapping my arms around her from behind ‘when am I going to see you again?’

‘I don’t know,’ she says distractedly, ignoring my touch. That stings. I sigh and pull away. 

‘Right, well, I’m out of here,’ I say as I swoop past her. 

‘Clair…’ she calls after me, and I turn. ‘Call me tonight,’ she manages a smile, then her phone goes off again and she answers it immediately, turning away.


End file.
